At approximately 3:00 a.m. on Sept. 30, 1982, a 21-year-old woman, identified as K.M., was coming home to her walk-up apartment building when she noticed and greeted an unfamiliar Black man in the entrance to the building.
She walked upstairs and as she put her key in the lock to her door, the man grabbed her from behind, threatened her with a knife, and forced her outside to a nearby wooded area. The man raped and orally sodomized her before running off. Morris then returned to her apartment. She woke up her fiancé, and bathed while he called the police. The woman was taken to a hospital and a rape kit was taken.
She described her attacker as 20 to 25 years old, 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall, stocky, had a dark complexion, and had bad teeth.
On Oct. 5, 1982, K.M., who was white, went to the police station where she viewed 65 photographs of Black men without making any identification. Three days later, St. Louis County Police Detective Karen Lasater came to K.M.’s apartment and showed her four more photographs, including one of 35-year-old Steven Toney. The photograph was from three years earlier and was the only one of the four that included information from the Missouri Department of Corrections. Toney had a prior conviction for robbery.
K.M. viewed a live lineup. The police told her that the man whose photograph she had identified was in the lineup. She selected Toney again.
On October 11, 1982, Toney was arrested. He was charged with forcible rape and forcible sodomy.
On October 14, the police also showed a photographic lineup containing Toney to Lee Adams, an 18-year-old attendant at a gas station near K.M.’s apartment. Adams identified Toney as a man who walked up to the station at about 3:30 a.m.
Toney went to trial in St. Louis County Circuit Court in April 1983 after rejecting the advice of his defense attorney, Stormy White, to plead guilty. White also rejected Toney’s urging to investigate Arnett Smith, who had been an initial suspect in the crime and had prior convictions for indecent exposure.
K.M. and Adams both identified Toney. The defense pointed out that Toney did not resemble the description given by K.M. Toney was 6 feet tall, with a medium complexion. He was 35 years old, had a slender build, a mustache and a beard, pock marks, and good teeth.
Barbara Beard, a forensic chemist at the St. Louis County Police crime laboratory, testified that a Negroid hair was found in the rape kit, but it was never examined or tested. Ms. Beard also testified that semen was identified in the rape kit, but no further tests were performed.
Toney’s grandmother, Mamie Toney, testified that at the time of the rape, Toney was in bed at her home sleeping.
The trial judge granted a prosecution motion to prohibit the defense from introducing into evidence a copy of a composite sketch that K.M. had helped police create as well as a photograph of Smith, which the defense contended showed that Smith more closely resembled the sketch than Toney did.
On April 8, 1983, the jury convicted Toney of forcible rape and forcible sodomy. Judge James Ruddy sentenced him to two consecutive sentences of life in prison.
In 1985, Toney, acting without a lawyer, filed a motion to vacate his convictions. He alleged multiple constitutional violations including ineffective assistance of counsel, violation of due process, inappropriate sentencing, exclusion of potentially exculpatory evidence, and inappropriate standard of evidence. Toney argued that he repeatedly asked his trial defense lawyer for DNA testing before trial and that she refused.
He was unsuccessful.
In 1995, Toney filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. That was denied as well in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
In 1995, Rebecca Stith was a volunteer attorney for the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. She was assigned to handle an appeal of the denial of Toney’s petition. She said that she was the 13 th attorney to work on Toney’s case.
Stitch argued the appeal, and in March 1997, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit sided with Toney, saying he raised “substantial claims that his counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to pursue the issue of mistaken identification and to obtain blood tests.”
Later that year, the cost of DNA testing was paid for by Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization that works to overturn wrongful convictions. The testing was performed by Cellmark Laboratories in Germantown, Maryland. In July 1997, the tests excluded Toney.
On July 17, 1997, the prosecution and the defense filed a motion to vacate Toney’s convictions. The motion was granted, the case was dismissed, and Toney was released. He had served more than 13 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Toney later filed a civil rights lawsuit, but it was dismissed. He subsequently was awarded $242,450 in state compensation.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 03-07-2026
