Prosecutors withheld key to video evidence in Kansas City murder, convict tells court
A Raytown man in prison for murder has told a judge that Jackson County prosecutors withheld the key to video evidence that showed he killed the man in self-defense.
As his attorney explained in a hearing last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, Sylvester R. Sisco II is asking a judge to vacate his conviction in the 2006 shooting that left one man dead and another injured.
Sisco is arguing that the guilty verdict against him was based on incomplete evidence because his trial attorney did not have full access to the video of the shooting, and prosecutors did not hand over key documents about a stolen firearm and the criminal histories of the victims.
That hearing was attended by relatives on both sides of the case and by Sisco, who appeared via video from prison, where he is serving a life sentence.
The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has disputed Sisco’s claims, saying it did make the video evidence available to his lawyer.
The case is scheduled to continue Wednesday.
Sisco’s guilt or innocence hinged in part on surveillance video that captured the shooting at the Filling Station Restaurant and Lounge in south Kansas City in the early morning hours of Oct. 16, 2006.
The video shows brothers Sylvester and Anthony Sisco engaged in an animated conversation — or an argument — with Jacob Higgs and Reno Dillard. And it clearly shows Anthony Sisco firing a gun, while images of the second shooter were less clear.
Higgs was killed in the shooting, while Dillard was severely injured.
The Kansas City Police Department declined The Star's request for a copy of the video, saying it was a closed record while Sisco's appeal continues.
Sylvester Sisco’s defense lawyer in the 2009 murder trial, Dan Ross, testified last week that prosecutors never gave him the media player software that was needed to view the video.
As a result, he said, he wasn’t able to scrutinize the video enough to see that it showed Reno Dillard and Jacob Higgs threatening the other two men with an AR-15 just before the shooting.
Prosecutors allowed him to view the video in their office, he said, but he didn’t have the opportunity to control the brightness of the image, which would have allowed him to see the rifle.
“My conclusion is they didn’t want me to observe evidence of self-defense,” Ross said in an interview with a Star reporter.
Sisco was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Two years later, facing trial for the same murder, his brother, Anthony Sisco, was able to use the video to win an acquittal.
By that time, his defense lawyer had independently tracked down the software needed to open the video files, Ross said.
Using the video in court, Anthony Sisco won a not guilty verdict based on self-defense.
In an unrelated drug case, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison but received a sentence reduction and is scheduled to be released in 2024.
The father of the Sisco brothers, Sylvester Sisco Sr., was in court to observe the hearing last week. In an interview with a Star reporter Monday, he said he remembered the difference in the quality of the videos from one murder trial to the other.
"It was wrong," he said. "How are they going to acquit the one and not acquit the other?"
Sylvester Sisco could have made a similar self-defense claim if his lawyer had been given full access to the video, Ross said. That would have meant being able to open it and work with it at his office, where he could adjust the brightness and contrast in his own time or even have an expert examine it.
Ross testified in court that when he viewed the video at the prosecutor’s office, the images were very dark. He said he could not see clearly the AR-15 that Higgs and Dilliard allegedly used to threaten the Sisco brothers.
Ross said there was other evidence that prosecutors did not provide to him in the discovery process: a report showing the AR-15 was stolen and records showing the results of a criminal background check on Higgs and Dillard.
That evidence also played a role when Anthony Sisco's attorney, Pat Peters, tracked it down himself and used it at trial.
At last week's hearing, Jackson County prosecutors disputed Sisco’s claims, showing that Ross received the videos before trial and noting that they were played in open court.
Opposing accounts
On Monday, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office provided The Star with a written statement saying that prosecutors gave Ross a DVD containing the video and the player to view it with.
“Sisco’s counsel complained that he could not open the video. But he also admitted that, once our office heard his complaint about not being able to view the video, we allowed him to review the video in our office,” the statement reads in part. “He now alleges that we did not adjust the contrast and brightness for him, which we deny.”
The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office statement says Ross did view the video with the brightness and contrast adjusted, and that the video was adjusted in court.
“In short, Sisco’s current claims are demonstrably false,” the statement says.
Ross has maintained that he never received the video player and that he complained about it numerous times ahead of trial. He said that, at the time, prosecutors said it would be too “difficult, or complicated” to provide him with the media player.
“It’s the state’s obligation to produce things like a video of the shooting,” Ross said. “It should come with a player that works.”
He said he agreed to view the video in the prosecutor’s office. But, he said, the arrangement was “uncommon” and not fair.
Ross said it was the only time prosecutors had given him video evidence without providing a usable player over the course of years.
He said that when he viewed the video in the prosecutor’s office, he didn’t see the AR-15 clearly, but when he later saw the brightened version of the video, the self-defense implications were clear to him.
“What I saw was dark. It was so dark that you couldn’t differentiate the details of individuals’ hand movements,” he said. “When you see the cleaned video, holy crap.”
At the hearing, Ann Mallot, a forensic specialist at the Kansas City Police Crime Laboratory, said she also did not see the rifle clearly when she examined the video ahead of Sylvester Sisco's trial.
Sisco's post-conviction attorney, Nicole Forsythe, said when she started working the case last year, she had the same problem that Ross had a decade earlier. The media player provided with the video did not work.
Forsythe said prosecutors were not helpful, but that technicians at the crime lab provided her with a player that worked.
In last week’s hearing, when the prosecutors and Sisco’s attorney examined the video, they began with a very dark image in which little was visible and then brightened it until the AR-15 could be seen.
In the video, which has no sound, the four men are seen shooting pool, having drinks and eventually getting into what appears to be an argument.
At one point, the AR-15 can be seen lying on a drink railing. Later, Higgs picks it up and carries it over to where Dillard is sitting on the pool table, near the other men.
When Anthony Sisco went to trial, his attorney argued that the rifle was being brandished at him before the shooting started.
"The key piece of video, along with some criminal defense records, when bound together, substantiate a self-defense defense," Forsythe said.
"Based on the verdict in Anthony Sisco's case, we would at minimum want a new trial," Forsythe said. "People need to be more cognizant of their responsibilities to the defendant."
Higgs’ mother, Juanita Higgs, watched the hearing with other relatives and said she didn’t believe Sylvester Sisco was innocent.
She had viewed the video too and said she didn’t think Dillard was going to use the rifle, so there wasn’t a self-defense claim to make.
“I think the prosecutors did a great job,” she said. “My son needs us to follow through with this until the end.”
Sisco’s case is scheduled to be heard again on Wednesday in Jackson County Circuit Court by Judge Joel Fahnestock.
This story was originally published April 10, 2018 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Prosecutors withheld key to video evidence in Kansas City murder, convict tells court."