Woodbury man charged with wife's murder wants confession thrown out
Feb. 26—The Woodbury man accused of fatally stabbing his wife last year while six children were upstairs watching TV asked a judge Friday to throw out a confession he made after his arrest in Wisconsin.
McKinley Phillips, 40, was indicted in November on a charge of first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing his 42-year-old wife, Shevon, multiple times in the basement of their Woodbury home on June 25, 2021. Six children, ranging in age from 5 to 15, were in the house at the time, according to the criminal complaint.
Phillips took a Greyhound bus headed for Chicago after the fatal stabbing, police said. Officers found him on the bus around 3 a.m. the next day near Tomah, Wisconsin, where he was arrested and jailed.
In an interview with Woodbury police detectives who traveled to the Monroe County Jail, Phillips said he had gotten into an argument with his wife after "he found a letter to her from an old boyfriend who was currently in jail," the complaint states. He went on to describe stabbing her several times in the back with a folding pocket knife.
When he was arrested in Tomah, Phillips was "wearing the same clothing he was wearing at the time of the murder ... covered in what appeared to be blood splatter," the complaint states.
At a hearing Friday in Washington County District Court, defense attorney Mac Guptil said Phillips' right to have an attorney present while he spoke with police was violated because he was not adequately advised that an attorney who was licensed in Minnesota would immediately be available to him.
"It is not my intent to allege that there was any type of involuntariness related to the statement made by Mr. Phillips; it's about whether the advisement was appropriate and the waiver (to his Miranda rights) was appropriate," Guptil said.
Kevin Mueller, criminal division chief for the Washington County Attorney's office, said in court that Guptil's challenge involves whether law enforcement officers properly advised Phillips that he would receive a Minnesota-licensed attorney before reading the Miranda statement to him.
"As a result, I guess, the allegation is that the statement should be tossed out as unconstitutional," Mueller said. "And to piggy-back on top of that, the other suggestion is that the grand jury indictment should also be tossed out to the extent that evidence of that first statement was used in the grand jury."
Prosecutors have until April 1 to respond to the challenge. Mueller said after the hearing that he could not comment further.
Friday's hearing was held by videoconference so that relatives of the victim could watch. Phillips participated from jail in Stillwater.
He's due back in court May 6 for a pretrial hearing.
