Witnesses back out in another murder

Published 9:00 pm Friday, December 8, 2006

PHILADELPHIA – City prosecutors struggled in a high-profile case this week to get fearful witnesses to stick to their stories, finding a deeply entrenched “code of silence” at work even in the slaying of a 5-year-old girl.

In an example of witnesses “going south,” or recanting testimony, four key witnesses in the Sept. 25 drive-by shooting of Casha’e Rivers took the stand in city court and withdrew statements they previously gave police.

In the most striking reversal, a witness whose statement was videotaped by police one day after the slaying told the judge he had just told police what they wanted to hear and that his detailed account of events wasn’t true.

Despite the wavering testimony from the parade of witnesses, a judge decided there was enough evidence for 24-year-old Kevin Felder to stand trial in the kindergartner’s death.

But the case highlighted just how much difficulty prosecutors in Philadelphia continue to face in building murder cases in a city that has recorded 375 homicides this year, putting it on a course to top last year’s mark of 380, which had been the highest in eight years.

In many cases, witnesses are either refusing to come forward or recanting when they do provide evidence, authorities say. Prosecutors blame that trend for scores of homicides going unsolved each year.

At Tuesday’s hearing, one witness changed his story by saying police had steered him to Felder during a photo lineup.

Another denied saying he was in the car when Felder allegedly opened fire.

Then Ronald Newton testified that much of what he said on a videotape played in the courtroom had been made up.

On the tape, Newton explained that the defendant had fired a half-dozen shots because he thought the car in which the girl was riding had been following them and that it belonged to a rival group.

On the witness stand, Newton gave a different account – as Felder, a burly felon with a five-page rap sheet, fixed his gaze on him.

“I just went with what they wanted to hear,” Newton said. “I was nervous. So, I signed it (the statement) to get it over with.”

Prosecutors were not surprised.

In March, they watched as each witness recanted in a trial over a gang shootout that killed a 10-year-old boy as he arrived at school. A judge hearing the nonjury trial still convicted the two young defendants, largely based on early statements police had obtained.

Fear among witnesses is not unfounded in Philadelphia.

Several trial witnesses have been killed in and around the city in recent years, including six relatives of a drug informant killed in an arson and a single mother ambushed a day before she was to plead to buying a gun for a felon.

An initially cooperative Richard Carpenter, 39, who rescinded his mug-shot identification, had told police that Felder shot at him from a car about a half-hour before Casha’e was killed.

But on the stand, he said Felder wasn’t the shooter.

“I’m trying not to walk through the neighborhood looking over my shoulder,” he said.