Lawyer claims illegal search, asks to drop charge
A defense lawyer on Friday argued in court that being a black man with dreadlocks is not enough of a reason to stop a Georgia man and subsequently arrest him in Butler city.
Leighton U. Ellis-Kerr, 32, of Decatur is charged with a felony for carrying a firearm without a license. The charge was the result of a multihour stakeout by city police on May 8, 2018, according to officer Nicholas Shulik's testimony Friday.
Ellis-Kerr's lawyer, Joseph Smith, argued that police obtained the gun through an illegal search and asked county Judge William Shaffer to throw the charge out. Shaffer said he will review the case and make a decision.
Shulik testified that he and other officers responded to a disturbance call in the 500 block of South Washington Street.
“We learned there was an armed robbery in progress,” Shulik said.
He said that he observed three people coming out of an apartment building. Asked what he gleaned from their departure, Shulik said all he could tell is that two of them were black men, one of whom was tall and had dreadlocks, which matched Ellis-Kerr's characteristics. The third person was a white woman.
Witnesses reported that those three people were the suspects, he recounted, but they were unable to locate them.
Neighbors told police that they had entered a home down the same street in the 400 block. Officers set up a surveillance around the place and, several hours later, they saw a tall black man with dreadlocks exit the home and enter a car being driven by someone else.
Police then pulled the car over and identified Ellis-Kerr as the backseat passenger.
Shulik claimed that while looking into the car, he saw a gun under the seat on which Ellis-Kerr had been sitting.
But Smith questioned why police pulled the car over. He asked Shulik if the car was observed violating any traffic laws. Shulik said “no” and added that when Ellis-Kerr came out of the house, he wasn't behaving strangely, nor did he resist arrest.
Ellis-Kerr has been in Butler County Prison since Aug. 10, 2018, after he was unable to post a $75,000 bond over drug-related charges in another case. He also has a third case in which the bail was set at $25,000. He has not been found guilty in either of these cases.
