A second trial opened Monday for an East Chicago man charged with breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s Gary apartment in March 2021 and setting the stove on fire.
Anthony Cobb, 32, was convicted in September 2023 of arson and burglary. He was sentenced a few months later to 12 years.
However, the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in November after they discovered that defense lawyer John Cantrell never saw the detective’s cellphone video recording of the hospital security footage captured from across the street.
Cobb has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Gary Police responded early on March 22, 2021, to the 500 block of Hayes Street.
Firefighters found remnants of an electric “stove fire” with ash on the walls. A flour-like powder was dumped on the sofa.
Deputy Prosecutor Jacquelyn Altpeter told jurors in opening statements that Cobb was the “suspect since day one.” She went out that night and came home to find her apartment “destroyed.” She went straight to Cobb’s home before returning to her place to call 911, saying he did it.
He took two TVs, a sound bar, and some Amazon packages for the woman’s daughter’s birthday that were stacked by her door. The accounts on the TV were later put into Cobb’s sister’s name, the ex-girlfriend discovered.
Cantrell said there was a “45-second gap” in Methodist Hospitals Northlake’s footage. Gary Police Detective JerVean Gates, who also worked as a hospital security guard, had his cellphone video for two years.
Any footage “should be from the hospital itself,” he told jurors.
The couple split in November 2021, documents show.
During the original investigation, a Methodist Hospitals security supervisor accidentally sent 9,000 screenshots of the security footage on a flash drive to Gates. It was turned over to the defense one week before the first trial started.
During those proceedings, Altpeter and Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson told Judge Salvador Vasquez three times the video footage was gone — i.e. purged from the hospital’s system. They used five still images, plus the security supervisor’s testimony on what he saw and pulled from the footage.
As the state’s last witness, Detective Gates testified he had recorded a copy on his cellphone off a monitor, but it was too large to transfer. He had shown the footage to the victim at the police station, who identified Cobb on it.
In her opinion, Appeals Judge Dana Kenworthy rebuked prosecutors.
Not having the video “severely limited (the defense’s) ability to effectively cross-examine the witnesses,” she wrote. “It also severely restricted his ability to lodge informed objections to the admission of secondary evidence. That the State provided the defense with a full set of photos in supplemental discovery makes no difference. Not only was there a dearth of evidence about how the system produced the photos, but the State provided the 9,006 photos only a week before trial, even though the case had been pending for over two years.”
The new trial is expected to run through mid-week.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
mcolias@post-trib.com
