Murder trial of former Columbus cop Adam Coy in Andre Hill shooting postponed again
A Franklin County judge has again postponed the trial of Adam Coy, a former Columbus police officer charged with murder in the fatal 2020 shooting of Andre Hill, an unarmed Black man, from next week to an undetermined date ‒ likely in 2023.
On Tuesday, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh, granted the defense’s request to reschedule.
Coy, 46, is charged with murder, reckless homicide, felonious assault and dereliction of duty in connection with the shooting of Hill, 47, on Dec. 22, 2020 during a response to a nonemergency call. Coy, who is free on a $1 million bond, appeared in court on Monday for a status conference.
At the status conference, Coy’s attorney, Mark Collins, asked the judge to postpone the trial. Collins said the two sides exchanged reports from their expert witnesses in early October and the defense needs more time to research and collect records in response to the witness for the prosecution.
Coy's legal team is also asking McIntosh to bar the prosecution from calling an expert witness, a professor who had a starring role in the trial of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd.
McIntosh said in his entry postponing the trial that these matters cannot be resolved in time to hold a trial as scheduled Monday. Potential jurors were to begin coming in on Friday for screening.
Ohio Assistant Attorney General Anthony Pierson, the special prosecutor on this case, objected in court Monday to postponing the trial.
“This case has been going on for almost two years now,” Pierson said. “Both parties have had ample opportunity to do their research, do their investigating, to look into experts. It’s time that we have a trial and put an end to this matter.”
Pierson said a witness, the owner of the home Hill was a guest at the night of the shooting, has died and he is concerned about losing more witnesses.
Defense wants to exclude prosecution's expert witness, professor who testified in Derek Chauvin trial
McIntosh is requiring both sides to provide more info on the expert witness issue before he rules on whether the expert can testify and under what parameters.
The witness, Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and current professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, has previously testified in other high-profile officer trials. Stoughton was the final witness for the prosecution in Chauvin's murder trial, and he testified for the prosecution in the manslaughter trial of Kim Potter, a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright after she said she mistook her gun for her Taser when trying to stop him from driving off. She was later convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to two years in prison.
In their motion asking the judge to exclude Stoughton’s testimony, Coy’s legal team criticized Stoughton’s expert report to the court. Attorney Kaitlyn Stephens said Stoughton “abandons the legal standard for deadly use of force and substitutes his own notion of proper police procedure.”
Stephens also said Stoughton uses hindsight in evaluating Coy’s use of force, which is prohibited under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Pierson said Monday in curt that Stoughton's report relies on credible information and his testimony should be allowed.
"(Stoughton) has testified in many cases, many of them national cases, about the area of policing and proper use of force," Pierson said.
More:Documents show ex-Columbus officer Adam Coy had history of inappropriate reactions
More:Body cameras show police officers failing to aid Andre Hill for minutes after he was shot
The shooting of Andre Hill
Coy shot Hill while Hill was exiting a garage at a home where he was an invited guest on the Northwest Side around 2 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2020.
Coy and officer Amy Detweiler were responding to a nonemergency call in the area about a vehicle repeatedly turning on and off. Coy had talked with Hill before Detweiler arrived and then Hill had walked up into the house through the garage. Body-camera footage shows the officers were walking up the driveway when Hill emerged from the dark, open garage with an illuminated cellphone in his raised left hand.
Collins has said that Coy fired after mistaking a set of keys in Hills’ right hand for a silver revolver. Hill was unarmed.
The body-camera footage shows that officers handcuffed Hill while he lay on the ground, but did not give Hill medical aid for more than 10 minutes.
Within a week of the shooting, the Columbus Division of Police fired Coy. In February, 2021, a Franklin County grand jury indicted Coy.
jlaird@dispatch.com
@LairdWrites
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Murder trial of former Columbus cop Adam Coy postponed again