A former St. Louis police officer will be sentenced next week after being convicted of helping other officers beat a Black undercover detective who they thought was a protester in 2017.
According to The Associated Press, prosecutors are seeking a 10-year sentence for Dustin Boone for his role in the beating and permanent injury of Luther Hall, a St. Louis Police Detective who was undercover monitoring protests at the time.
Boone’s attorneys are seeking a sentence of 26 months in prison instead. They say he did not participate in Hall’s beating but only held him down after the initial attack because other officers were “acting as though” they were making an arrest, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In a recent sentencing memo, prosecutors said 10 years is the sentence Boone should receive because it is the sentence recommended by federal guidelines for his conviction. They also said Boone had a history of abusing suspects, and that they believed he wanted to use his position on the Civil Disobedience Team as a chance to beat protestors.
Boone’s attorneys also want a 26-month sentence because they said he should not receive a longer sentence than his former colleague Randy Hays. Hays was sentenced to over four years in prison for excessive force in beating Hall. He pleaded guilty in 2019.
For more reporting from The Associated Press, see below.
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Boone was convicted in June of a federal civil rights violation related to Hall’s beating.
Prosecutors have said the officers mistakenly believed that Hall, a Black man, was participating in a protest after the acquittal of Jason Stockley, a white officer accused of fatally shooting a Black man following a high-speed chase.
Boone’s attorneys, Justin Kuehn and Stephen Williams, also said in the memo that the St. Louis police department condoned and encouraged violence, particularly racial violence.
The police department and the police officers union declined to comment on the filing to the Post-Dispatch.
Officer Christopher Myers and Officer Steven Korte were acquitted of the civil rights charge, and Korte was also acquitted of lying to the FBI.
Myers will plead guilty in January to a misdemeanor charge of deprivation of rights for destroying Hall’s phone, his lawyer has said.
Bailey Colletta received probation for lying to the FBI and a grand jury about the beating.
Hall, who was permanently injured in the attack, reached a $5 million settlement with the police department.
