Reed gets life for killing Sackett

Ronald Reed received a life sentence Wednesday for the murder of St. Paul police officer James Sackett. But Jeanette Sackett-Monteon told Reed in court that she had received her own life sentence long ago.

The fatal ambush that killed Sackett, she said, "took away my husband, my lover, my best friend. But most of all it took away my children's father. ...

"I had to live with 36 years of crying, of pain, of missing Jim. Today, I feel comfort."

The unsolved case of who killed James Sackett ended Wednesday when a Ramsey County jury convicted Reed, 55, of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of the St. Paul police officer.

It was a day of reckoning for Reed, a Chicago pipefitter who prosecutors said advocated killing a police officer to get national attention for his group of young St. Paul black radicals.

For Sackett-Monteon and her four fatherless children, however, it was perhaps the first day of consolation since the officer was cut down by a sniper's bullet shortly after midnight on May 22, 1970.

Reed sat quietly with hands folded and showed no emotion as Ramsey County Chief District Judge Gregg Johnson read the jury's guilty verdicts. An hour later, Johnson sentenced Reed to life in prison.

Under 1970 sentencing standards, Reed must serve at least 17½ years before he can ask for parole.

Before he was sentenced, Reed called the convictions "unjust."

But he added: "If my unjust conviction brings consolation and closure to officer Sackett's legacy and beloved family, then I accept the consequences gladly and without malice toward anyone."

Jurors announced at 3 p.m. that they had arrived at a verdict, after perhaps a dozen hours of deliberation on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Juror Raymond Cleveland, 45, of St. Paul, compared the prosecution's case to "a pile that was building and just got bigger."

According to Cleveland, the first vote taken when deliberations began found seven jurors voting to convict and five undecided.

By Wednesday morning, 10 jurors favored conviction. The final two holdouts moved to convict after the jury listened again to a tape of Reed's then-girlfriend, Connie Trimble, placing the fake emergency call that lured Sackett to his death.

Defense attorneys John Pecchia and Marcus Almon said Reed's convictions will be appealed. "It was a difficult case," Pecchia said.

Reed's family members said they had no comment to make as they left the courtroom.

Prosecutors Susan Hudson and Jeffrey Paulsen said they could not comment about the verdicts because of the scheduled April 10 trial of Larry L. Clark, who is accused of participating in Sackett's murder along with Reed. Clark, 55, who lives in the Twin Cities, faces the same charges as Reed.

Controversial testimony

Sackett was 27 and working his first shift after a leave for the birth of his fourth child when he was fatally shot in front of 859 Hague Av. on May 22, 1970, while responding to the call placed by Trimble.

At her own trial for Sackett's murder in 1972, Trimble admitted that she made the bogus call from a nearby telephone booth. She was acquitted, despite her refusal to say who had her place the call.

In 2004, however, she told a Ramsey County grand jury that Reed had her make the call and then drove her to Clark's home at 882 Hague Av., only minutes before Sackett was killed about 100 yards away.

She repeated that statement in court last week, but added that she believed that Reed also had been tricked into making the call and that he wasn't involved with Sackett's death.

Prosecutors said that Reed told her that story and that she didn't want to believe that Reed used her to kill Sackett.

Jurors heard from a series of middle-aged men who said they were in meetings in the late 1960s where Reed advocated killing police in hopes of getting a Black Panther Party chapter in St. Paul.

One man, Joseph Garrett, said Reed tried to recruit him to kill an officer only a week before Sackett was ambushed. And prosecution witness John Griffin said Reed confessed to him several years later that he had shot Sackett.

Pecchia called those witnesses unreliable and said prosecutors had to use them because they had no murder weapon or eyewitness to the shooting. But the defense rested Monday without calling a witness of their own -- including Reed.

A long time coming

Tyrone Terrill, St. Paul's human rights director, predicted that Reed's conviction could heighten racial tensions in the city. He said it was hard to believe Reed could be convicted despite the lack of evidence.

And he wondered if jurors would have reached the same conclusion had Sackett been a civilian and not a police officer.

"Somebody did it, but the question is: Are you sure you've got the right person?" Terrill said.

St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington, who was in the courtroom as the verdict was read, said Reed's conviction brings some consolation to Sackett's family and to police officers who had worked with Sackett.

But he added: "It certainly doesn't heal the wounds that his death brought to the police department ... [and] it doesn't bring Jim Sackett back."

Ron Ryan, a longtime St. Paul police officer and head of the Minnesota Gang Strike Force, went to the courtroom even though he admitted he was a bit afraid to go. "That night is burned in my mind. It's a long time coming," he said.

For City Council Member Dan Bostrom, who was the supervising sergeant the night Sackett was shot, the verdicts brought relief.

"This is something I've lived for nearly 36 years," Bostrom said. "It's not as if it's something that you dwell on every day. But it's something nagging that never goes away."

Staff writers Curt Brown, Herón Márquez Estrada and Jackie Crosby contributed to this report.

Paul Gustafson • 651-298-1545