Booking photo of Joseph Renick (left). Photo of Sentonio Cox.
Screen grab from KMOV News and City Justice Center” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>
Screen grab from KMOV News and City Justice Center
Booking photo of Joseph Renick (left). Photo of Sentonio Cox.
A 58-year-old St. Louis man who shot and killed a 15-year-old who had his hands up received a sentence in court today that a judge called “extremely favorable.”
Joseph Renick submitted an Alford plea to one charge of involuntary manslaughter in court this morning for the August 2019 shooting death of Sentonio Cox.
Renick is white. Cox was Black.
As part of Renick’s Alford plea, he did not have to admit that he was guilty of the crime he was accused of, but instead merely conceded that prosecutors had ample evidence to prove he was guilty had the case gone to trial.
Renick was given a 10-year sentence after submitting the plea, though he may only serve a sliver of that in state custody.
Cox and his cousin were allegedly looking into parked cars on the 7300 block of Vermont in south St. Louis’ Patch neighborhood when Renick, who was staying in a house on that block with Brian Potter, shot at Cox after backing him into a vacant lot.
The police probable cause statement says that Renick pointed a revolver at and shot Cox in the head as the teenager was “backing away from [Renick] in retreat with his hands raised.”
Both Renick and Potter were charged with murder. Potter allegedly told Renick to “shoot this piece of shit.”
At Potter’s trial last August, his attorney discredited prosecutors’ primary witness, Amanda Crowell, who lived on Vermont and said she heard Potter give Renick the order to shoot Cox. Crowell had previously lied under oath in a separate drug case in St. Charles.
The jury acquitted Potter.
Renick was scheduled to start his trial next week, but the plea deal was hashed out between the Circuit Attorney’s Office and Renick’s attorneys Scott Rosenblum and T.J. Matthes beforehand.
In addition to the murder charge being reduced to involuntary manslaughter, charges of armed criminal action and unlawful gun possession were dropped.
Judge Christopher McGraugh called the plea deal an “extremely favorable outcome” for Renick, but also said he wasn’t in the habit of second-guessing plea deals reached between prosecutors and defense attorneys. He did however twice tell Renick that the almost-four years the case spent reaching this point represented a “tortured history.”
Judge McGraugh said that because he also presided over Potter’s trial, he had a good sense of the evidence that would be brought to bear if Renick’s case went to trial.
“If this case did proceed with murder first, armed criminal action and unlawful possession, you’d be spending the rest of your life in the Missouri Department of Corrections,” Judge McGraugh said.
However, he added that having overseen the Potter trial he was also aware of the difficulties the state had in that case, and said he assumed the state would have the same problems if the Renick case proceeded to trial as well.
Renick will be parole-eligible after completing a third of the sentence, which he has already effectively done after getting credit for time served for spending almost four years in city jail.
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