‘Alarming deficiencies’ by Tacoma police in murder case, defense attorney says
A 30-year-old man jailed for nearly three years for a Tacoma homicide case was given no further jail time at a sentencing hearing Nov. 14. An investigation conducted by the man’s attorney into police work in the case allegedly found missteps and evidence of dishonesty.
Emily Gause, the defendant’s attorney, said evidence in the case pointed to her client’s innocence. Pierce County prosecutors stopped short of saying the same but acknowledged there were “proof problems” related to Gause’s client, Kenneth Wesley Lamar Jr.
“When law enforcement cuts corners or distorts facts, the truth becomes the first casualty. Those mistakes can steal years from an innocent person’s life,” Gause said in a news release.
“We don’t view the evidence as pointing to this defendant’s innocence; however, we do acknowledge proof problems as to Mr. Lamar,” said Adam Faber, a spokesperson for the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in this shooting death.”
Originally charged with first-degree murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison, Lamar pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in March. He maintained his innocence in his guilty-plea statement filed with the court but said that he reviewed the evidence against him and believed there was a possibility a jury could find him guilty.
Second-degree manslaughter is considered a “strike” under Washington’s “three strikes law,” the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, which results in life imprisonment when a person has three convictions for crimes considered most serious offenses. Lamar has several prior felony convictions, mostly from when he was a minor. He was most recently convicted of second-degree promoting prostitution in 2022 for an incident from 2016.
At a sentencing hearing in Pierce County Superior Court, Judge Angelica Williams followed a joint sentencing recommendation from the defense and prosecutors and imposed no further jail time for Lamar. According to court records, his standard sentencing range was about five to seven years. Lamar served over 34 months in jail while this case pended.
Lamar was charged alongside Keon Eugene Simms for the Dec. 20, 2021 fatal shooting of 46-year-old Jason Arkell. According to the probable cause document, detectives believed Lamar and Simms killed Arkell in a case of mistaken identity, targeting him because they believed he was responsible for shooting a member of a gang Lamar and Arkell were thought to be part of.
Arkell was found dead shortly after midnight next to his Honda Accord at an apartment complex on South 93rd Street in the South End. According to charging papers, the vehicle had more than a dozen bullet holes in it. Surveillance video reportedly showed a light-colored vehicle pass the Honda at 12:16 a.m., then return six minutes later. Muzzle flashes could be seen from the driver and rear passenger windows just before it passed the Honda again.
Arkell’s death was among five the FBI identified to The News Tribune as being linked to members of the Knoccout Crips, a street gang formed around 2006 to 2008 in Tacoma, according to federal authorities. At a news conference at Tacoma police headquarters in August, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western Washington said the string of homicides prompted an investigation into fentanyl trafficking. That probe exposed a multi-state drug ring moving fentanyl between Phoenix, Tacoma and, in at least one instance, Baltimore.
Gause said there was no evidence of Lamar being a gang member in the Arkell homicide case, and that the lead detective agreed with that in defense interviews. Contacted by email, a representative for the FBI declined to comment when asked if it could identify evidence of Lamar’s purported gang membership.
The Tacoma Police Department declined to answer questions on the allegations made about missteps and dishonesty in their investigation after repeated inquiries.
“Due to an ongoing criminal matter related to this investigation and in order to preserve the integrity of that process we cannot provide further comment at this time,” said Shelbie Boyd, a spokesperson for the Police Department.
Simms remains charged with first-degree murder and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in Arkell’s death with a jury trial scheduled for January 2026. Tacoma detectives untruthful about informant, attorney says
The defense’s probe of the Tacoma Police Department’s investigation of Arkell’s killing, according to Gause, revealed “alarming deficiencies” in the department’s investigative processes, including the alleged use of false and misleading statements in sworn reports and search warrants.
Gause said police mischaracterized key witness information that formed the foundation of the case against Lamar. The defense attorney said missteps by police made it hard to trust information used to start the homicide investigation and misled the court and defense for months.
“The defense argued these mistakes showed either a serious misunderstanding of the law or a deliberate effort to twist key facts — actions that damage public trust in law enforcement,” Gause Law Offices said in a news release.
Most notable was the claim that two Tacoma police detectives fabricated the existence of an “anonymous caller” who allegedly implicated Lamar. In a letter to prosecutors included in a sentencing memorandum, Gause said detectives knew the identity of the person who provided information and that she was a “known liar.”
According to Gause, detectives continued to use the person’s information in applications for search warrants without corroborating it. One of the detectives was confronted in a defense interview about lying in police reports about the source being anonymous. According to Gause, the detective admitted to fabricating details in the investigation by falsely attributing the information to an anonymous caller.
Gause said the detective tried to downplay the misrepresentation and claimed he wasn’t aware of the difference between an anonymous tip and a known confidential informant. The attorney said that distinction was important for establishing their credibility, and that the detective referred to it as an “anonymous tip” over a dozen times in sworn reports and affidavits used to obtain warrants to avoid having the source scrutinized.
Lamar’s attorney also said she found police misidentified the suspect vehicle, misinterpreted cell-tower data and disregarded credible alternate suspect evidence, including information that the victim was involved in a drug dispute with another person shortly before his death.
“Despite holding Mr. Lamar in jail for nearly three years, the State could not produce physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, reliable digital data, or credible motive to support the charge,” Gause said in the sentencing memorandum.