Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004

Schieber lawsuit goes to the jury

The murder victim's parents argue that Phila. is liable. Yesterday saw closing arguments in the suit.

By Joseph A. Slobodzian,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A federal jury is to resume deliberations today in the lawsuit that contends the City of Philadelphia should be held responsible for the 1998 murder of University of Pennsylvania graduate student Shannon Schieber by confessed serial rapist Troy Graves.

The civil jury of six women and six men reviewed evidence for about 21/2 hours yesterday after instructions in the law from U.S. District Judge Norma L. Shapiro and closing arguments by lawyers for the city and Schieber's parents.

The jury is to resume deliberations at 9:30 a.m. at the federal courthouse in Center City. If the jurors decide the city is liable for violating Schieber's constitutional rights of equal treatment and due process, they will return to court for additional argument on the issue of money damages to be awarded her parents, Sylvester and Vicki Schieber of Chevy Chase, Md.

The Schiebers' lawsuit contends that a police practice of downgrading rape complaints enabled Graves to prey on women during 1997 and to sexually assault and strangle Schieber, 23, a brilliant doctoral candidate at Penn's Wharton School, on May 7, 1998.

"This brutal and senseless murder would not have occurred were it not for this pervasive and widespread practice and custom of downgrading sexual claims and treating the victims in an otherwise discriminatory manner," said David Rudovsky, an attorney for the Schiebers, in his closing arguments to the jury.

The practice of downgrading sexual-assault complaints to "noncrimes" or recoding them as burglaries or other assaults, Rudovsky argued, resulted in a system in which beat officers in Center City were never told of a pattern of rapes involving young, single women living along Pine Street west of Broad Street.

One of the officers ignorant of that pattern, Rudovsky said, was Tyrone Winckler, who stopped Graves near 12th and Pine Streets in Center City in the early morning of Sept. 9, 1997 - eight months before Schieber's murder - after police received a call about a prowler.

Not knowing about the rapes and because Graves had no outstanding criminal warrants, Winckler let him walk away.

After his 2002 capture in Colorado after eight sexual assaults, Graves, 25, was convicted of attacking four Center City women in 1997, murdering Schieber on May 7, 1998, and attacking a sixth Philadelphia woman in 1999. He is serving a life sentence in Colorado.

"It's all so clear now... when you've had five years to figure it out," chief deputy city solicitor Shelley R. Smith countered in her closing to the jury.

"Hindsight is 20/20," Smith added. "We know there were sexual assaults. We know now who the assailant was. We didn't and we couldn't have known it in 1997."

Smith mocked Winckler's trial testimony that he would have detained Graves had he known about the pattern of rapes on Pine Street, noting that Winckler is represented by Rudovsky in an unrelated civil-rights suit against the Police Department.

"You should disregard his testimony," Smith said. "He sat on the witness stand and lied to you."