ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis jury found former St. Louis police officer Lafeal Lawshea not guilty Friday of raping two former colleagues.
The jury deliberated for 1 1/2 hours on the case, before determining Lawshea was not guilty of two counts of forcible rape.
Former officers Lafeal Lawshea and Torey Phelps were charged in March 2021 for sexual offenses dating to 2009.
In December, a jury found Phelps not guilty of raping a former colleague while she was unconscious, after little more than an hour of deliberations. The same woman in that case accused Lawshea of drugging her and allowing Phelps to rape her.
Both of Lawshea's alleged victims testified during the week-long trial.
Two jurors, who did not want to be named, told 5 On Your Side the prosecution did not present any evidence that the assaults occurred, other than a message from social media exchanged between Phelps and one of the alleged victims following the assault and a picture of Lawshea's house.
One of the woman who accused Lawshea of rape is a white woman. Lawshea is Black. His attorney, Travis Noble, said she began accusing Lawshea of raping her after rumors started to spread among white officers that she liked sleeping with Black men.
The two jurors who spoke to 5 On Your Side following deliberations included a Black man and a Black woman. The woman said she couldn't send a man to prison for the rest of his life based on the testimony of two female officers whose testimony included "lies," and who waited more than 10 years to report the allegations.
Some of the discrepancies included how one of the alleged victims denied during a deposition that she consulted with a civil attorney about suing the police department, but admitted doing so at trial.
She also told internal affairs investigators she never had a threesome with Lawshea and another woman. Then at the trial, she admitted to engaging in a threesome with Lawshea.
"I'm just happy and relieved. My attorney, Travis Noble, was able to get me back to my son and my family," Lawshea said following the verdict. "All the state's witnesses lied, and if I wasn't a police officer, I wouldn't have even been charged by this office but here we are."
Assistant Circuit Attorney Jeremy Crowley said both of the alleged victims' stories had "spooky similarities," during his closing argument Friday. Both women claimed they met up with Lawshea for drinks and ended up barely conscious after he put something in those drinks.
The alleged victim who said Phelps raped her while Lawshea watched testified that she was in a consensual sexual relationship with Lawshea and continued to have sex with him following the alleged rape he witnessed.
She told jurors she continued to have sex with him hoping he would some day apologize for what he let happen to her.
"This is all about money and about protecting their reputation off of rumors they started," Lawshea said. "We shouldn't be here."
Lawshea was suspended from the force after he was charged and ultimately terminated at the end of 2021. He spent 69 days at the City Justice Center starting in March 2021.
"I was in there with people I put in there," he said. "I had a guy put in there for murder and he was convicted that year too off of my case."
Lawshea said he wants to go back to policing, and, if he can't, he wants to go to law school.
"He's going to go to law school and come work for me," Noble said.
Phelps attended Friday's hearings, too.
The two men embraced following the verdict.
"This has been a long three years, now it's finally over and now we can start putting our lives back together again," Phelps said. "It's a good feeling to see all lies exposed and hopefully somebody on the other side recognizes that we were falsely accused, lied on, our names drug through the mud, and, at some point, we just want our names back. The truth is out there now, it just depends on what people want to do with it."
Both of the alleged victims remain employed as officers with the police department.