On August 15, 1996, a 26-year-old woman pulled into a parking lot near the St. Louis Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, planning to return to work. She approached a man in the lot, thinking he was a parking attendant. The man told her that she had to move her car immediately or it would be towed
As she walked back to her car, the man followed. As she got in the car to leave, the man told her she could stay. When she got back out, the man brandished a screwdriver and told her to hand over her keys and her purse.
She struggled with him and then jumped out of the car and ran, leaving her purse on the seat of the car. As she was getting out, she noticed that the man was bleeding and saw blood inside the driver’s side door.
She ran into a nearby parking garage and called the police.
The victim, who was white, described her attacker as a clean-shaven Black man wearing a baseball cap. She said the man was 5 feet 10 inches tall, with a “David Letterman-like” gap between his teeth. The next day, the victim helped police draw a composite sketch of the attacker. The same day, the police recovered the victim’s car in East St. Louis, Illinois. Latent fingerprints and swabs of the blood stain inside the driver’s side door were collected.
On August 21, 1998,, a detective arrested 30-year-old Antonio Beaver because he thought Beaver resembled the composite sketch. However, Beaver had a full mustache, was 6 feet 2 inches tall and had a broken front tooth. The detective prepared a live lineup including Beaver and three other men—two of them police officers. Beaver and the other non-officer were the only two wearing baseball caps, and Beaver was the only one with noticeable defects to his teeth. The victim identified Beaver as her attacker.
Beavers was charged with first-degree robbery.
Prior to trial, the St. Louis City District Attorney’s Office offered Beavers a deal to plead guilty in exchange for a 10-year prison term. He declined that offer.
Beaver went to trial in St. Louis City District Court in April 1997. The victim identified him as her attacker. The blood on the car was in amounts too small to be tested, according to the prosecution.
The defense presented evidence showing that fingerprints collected from the driver’s side door and the rear view mirror of the victim’s car did not belong to the victim or Beaver.
The defense argued that prints left on the rearview mirror indicated that the person who left them must have driven the car.
On April 25, 1997, after several hours of deliberation over two days, the jury convicted Beaver of first-degree robbery. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In 2001, acting without a lawyer, Beaver filed a motion requesting DNA testing. The prosecution opposed the motion, but in 2005, Beaver was granted a hearing. Subsequently, the Innocence Project accepted Beaver’s case and filed another brief on his behalf in 2006.
In October 2007, the prosecution agreed to DNA testing on the swab of blood from inside the car door. On March 20, 2007, the test results were reported: Beaver was excluded as the source of the blood. The DNA profile was identified as belonging to another man already incarcerated for other crimes.
On March 29, 2007, Circuit Court Judge Michael David, acting on a joint request from the prosecution and the defense, vacated Beaver’s conviction. The prosecution then dismissed the case, and Beaver was released from prison.
In May 2007, Beaver was awarded $181,000 in compensation from the state of Missouri.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 03-23-2026
