Elmer Smith: The beating was wrong, but was prosecution worse?

WE SAW them squirming on the ground, fending off the kicks and nightstick blows in that televised police feeding frenzy.

We watched officers drag them from a car, watched one crazed cop running from one already-subdued suspect to the others, as if he was in a rush to get in a few more licks before someone made them stop.

But nobody made them stop, not before they finished meting out their street justice. A shower of light from a hovering helicopter didn't make them stop, their victims' screams didn't make them stop and nothing in their training or their consciences made them stop.

We knew it was wrong. But how wrong was it?

If these guys hadn't committed a violent crime, we figured, the cops wouldn't have overreacted.

Because even as we watched that scene unfold, we figured or, at least, hoped that the bad guys were the ones who were getting stomped in the street.

So, now what? A jury that heard testimony in one of the weakest criminal cases ever thrown together has ruled that the three guys we saw squirming on the ground are not guilty.

Two of them spent a year in jail. Their families spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend them from a prosecution that was so thin a jury could see right through it.

They didn't beat this rap on a technicality. Jurors told reporters that they did not hear enough credible evidence to justify a guilty verdict.

Prosecutors had told jurors that Pete Hopkins, 20; Dwayne Dyches, 26; and Brian Hall, 24, pulled up to the corner of 4th and Annsbury streets at about 10 p.m. on May 5, 2008. They said that Hopkins got out and fired shots at four men, injuring three.

The three defendants supposedly fled, leading police on a chase that ended at 2nd and Pike, where police dragged them from their car and beat them like rented mules.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey fired four officers and disciplined four others after reviewing the tape from the Fox 29 helicopter crew that night.

But there was no tape of the shooting scene, and officer Carlos Buitrago, who said that he was hunkered down in an unmarked car while working undercover, is the one witness who said that he saw who fired the shots.

Buitrago's testimony was the only bridge between the shooting scene at 4th and Annsbury and the beating of the suspects at 2d and Pike streets.

There was no scientific evidence to tie the three defendants to a gun that police say they found 25 days later along the path of the pursuit.

If any of the three had a clear motive, it wasn't clear from testimony. The three shooting victims testified that they did not see who shot them. But police say that the shooter was seven feet away from them.

"Tapes of Officer Buitrago's call from his handheld have him saying that two black males, probably the shooters, had fled on foot eastbound through an alley," said Mary T. Maran, who represented Hopkins.

"But, later versions said no one fled on foot. Officer Buitrago said he couldn't get out of the back seat of his car to chase the suspects. Too much hinged on him. There were just too many inconsistencies."

Evan Hughes, who represented Brian Hall, said that he knew from the start that his guy was innocent.

"You kind of get a feel for what people are capable of," he said. "Brian wouldn't have done this.

"As soon as the Commonwealth put on their case, it was clear that this was a fantastic story they were throwing up to justify the beating.

"There were too many coincidences. Initial flash reports to police radio for some reason were not recorded. That never happens."

So, now what?

Commissioner Ramsey's next tough task may be to determine if police and prosecutors in their haste just cobbled together a sloppy prosecution. Or, did police concoct a prosecution to justify the beatings.

Not that there could be any justification. We always knew that what we saw on those tapes was wrong.

But how wrong was it? *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith