At around midnight on October 21, 2017, firefighters and police in East Cleveland, Ohio, responded to a call about a van on fire. Inside the vehicle, they found a badly burned body with no identification.
Dr. Erica Armstrong, a deputy medical examiner of the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office, performed the autopsy, which indicated 10 gunshot wounds. She recovered eight bullets. Armstrong used a surgical plate with identification numbers to identify the body as that of 34-year-old Jamarr Forkland.
Forkland ran Jus Jays, a used-car business, on the east side of Cleveland, and his friends told officers with the East Cleveland Police Department that Forkland had been at the lot on the night of his death, hanging out and celebrating Shawndell Lilly’s birthday.
Towards the end of the night, 29-year-old Jerry Sims Jr. arrived with his girlfriend, E.C. Witnesses told the police that Sims and Forkland argued, and that Sims broke a bottle of wine over Forkland’s head. The party broke up. One man said that when he left the car lot, the only people remaining were Sims, Forkland, E.C., and Jwan Boyd, whom Sims treated as an uncle.
The East Cleveland police brought E.C. in for questioning on October 31. E.C. said that after Sims and Forkland had fought, she and Sims left, went to a liquor store, and then to the house of Sims’s mother, where they spent the night. E.C. was detained overnight in a basement holding cell at the police department.
The next day, E.C. met with an attorney, who told her she was going to be charged with obstruction of justice. According to the police, E.C. then provided a statement to the police, implicating Sims in Forkland’s death. In a third interview, she told the police that Brandon Montgomery had helped Sims move Forkland’s body and set fire to the van.
Police arrested Sims and Montgomery on November 7, 2017. Sims was charged with aggravated murder, two counts of assault, arson, offenses against a human corpse, tampering with evidence, and two weapons offenses. Montgomery was charged with arson, offenses against a human corpse, tampering with evidence, and two weapons offenses.
After his arrest, Sims gave a statement to the East Cleveland police, including Detective Kenneth Lundy. He acknowledged the fight at the car lot, including the use of the wine bottle. Sims said he left in E.C.’s car and ended up at his mother’s house. He said that he later returned to the car lot because he lost his keys. He denied any involvement in Forkland’s death.
Sims’s trial in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas began on November 11, 2019.
Two months before Forkland’s death, Sims had been indicted for felonious assault that was said to have occurred on August 26, 2017. A firearms and tool marks examiner from the Cuyahoga County Regional Forensic Science Laboratory had found that the shell casings from that incident “matched” a shell casing found inside Forkland’s van. Prosecutors moved to join the assault case with the murder case, arguing that the evidence overlapped.
Judge Michael Shaughnessy denied the motion. Sims’s attorney asked that the state be barred from mentioning the other case in its opening statement. Judge Shaughnessy appeared to agree, instructing prosecutors that the opening statement be “consistent with the court’s rulings.”
Later, the prosecutor said the state would “sanitize” any mention of the other case in its opening argument but that it still intended to introduce the firearm evidence through testimony. Judge Shaughnessy said, “Yeah. I think that is as consistent with my ruling as possible. The court is not in a position to prohibit the state from putting on their case.”
During its opening statement, the prosecutor said: “I mentioned earlier that there was a 9 mm casing recovered in the engine block of the vehicle. That will be an important piece of information for you. The reason it will be important is you will hear that casing was submitted through a system called the [National Integrated Ballistic Information Network], which kind of matches up that casing with any other known casing that has been recovered. And after, there’s a match, and that case matches to another incident, and it’s associated with another incident with Jerry Sims.”
Several witnesses testified about the events at the car lot and the relationship between Sims and Forkland.
Lilly testified that there had been a falling out between Sims and Forkland in the weeks before the murder. He said Forkland had told Sims he didn’t want Sims coming around the car lot anymore. Lilly said he saw Sims pull a gun out during the fight with Forkland, but Boyd told him to put it away.
During cross-examination, Lilly said that Sims didn’t appear to be acting “fishy” the next day. He also said that many of Forkland’s customers were upset with him, because the cars he sold were “lemons.”
E.C. testified that she drove Sims to the lot after Sims received a call from Boyd telling him to get down there. At the lot, E.C. said, Sims and Forkland fought, and then people started to leave. Eventually, she said, it was just her, Boyd, Sims, and Forkland. She said she wanted to go, but Boyd told her not to leave without Sims.
She said she pulled her car out of the lot and waited for Sims. Boyd drove off. She said she saw Forkland get into his van to leave, but Sims closed the gate. She said she then saw Sims walk toward the van. After she heard shots, she concluded that “Jerry shot Jamarr.” E.C. said Sims ran toward her car, holding a gun.
Inside the car, E.C. said, Sims was swearing and worrying about what Boyd would say. She said Sims said, “Me an Unc [are] going to fall out about this.” She said Sims returned to the lot, turned the lights off in Forkland’s van, and closed the gate.
E.C. said that Sims called Montgomery. They picked him up at his house, then drove to a gas station to buy gas and some gloves. They returned to the lot, and Sims drove Forkland’s van—with Forkland inside—to a neighborhood in East Cleveland. She said that Sims doused the van in gasoline, then set it on fire. Later, they returned to the car lot, and Montgomery and Sims left the business with some plastic bags.
E.C. testified that she did not try to get help that night because she did not want to do anything to cause Sims to hurt her.
At the end of the night, E.C. said, she told Sims, “I never thought you’d put me in a situation like this.” She said Sims responded, “If I go down, we all going down.”
James Kooser, the firearms and tool marks examiner from the Cuyahoga County Regional Forensic Science Laboratory, testified that his report said that six of the eight bullets recovered during the autopsy were fired from the same 9 mm gun. The other two bullets were too damaged for analysis. Without referencing Sims, Kooser also testified that the shell casing found in Forkland’s van was fired from the same weapon as the shell casings found at the August crime scene. The police didn’t recover a weapon at either location.
Lundy, the East Cleveland detective, testified about Sims’s statement. He said that Sims was found to be in possession of several weapons at the time of his arrest, but none of the weapons were consistent with the evidence recovered from the van or the autopsy. He also testified about the consistency between the firearm evidence from the two crime scenes.
Jacob Kunkle, a cellphone analyst and special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified that he mapped the location data from Sims’s and Montgomery’s cellphones. He said the location of the devices throughout the evening were consistent with E.C.’s testimony.
The police had obtained a surveillance video from the area near the van fire. The time stamping was nearly 11 hours off, but when adjusted it showed two vehicles pulling up at 11:41 p.m. to an area along Wadena Street. Later, there appeared to be movement between the two vehicles and then an explosion. Forty-three seconds later, the second vehicle drove off.
Sims did not testify. His sole witness was Antonio Roberson, who testified that he had shot Forkland while high on PCP and then set fire to the van. At the time of his testimony, Roberson was serving a four-year sentence for robbery, and he had met Sims when they were in the same pod at the Cuyahoga County Jail.
Roberson had previously confessed to another murder but testified that wasn’t quite accurate; he had only been involved in a weapons transaction related to that crime. His confession to that earlier murder had fallen apart when records showed he was incarcerated at the time of the victim’s death. Roberson explained this by testifying he had escaped from the facility.
On November 15, 2019, the jury convicted Sims on all charges, except one assault count. He later received a sentence of 40 1/2 years to life in prison.
Montgomery later pled guilty to arson, offenses against a human corpse, tampering with evidence, and a weapons violation. With credit for his time in jail awaiting the resolution of his case, Montgomery was placed on probation.
Sims appealed, arguing that the prosecutor had committed misconduct by including evidence of the unrelated crime in the state’s opening argument and through the testimony of Lundy and Kooser.
Sims’s appeal also said that his trial attorney had provided ineffective assistance by failing to stop the state from using the forensic evidence from the unrelated shooting, even after Judge Shaughnessy had issued his ruling. The appeal also said the trial attorney should have objected to testimony about other weapons possessed by Sims.
In addition, the appeal said Judge Shaughnessy should have recused himself from presiding over the trial, because as a defense attorney he had represented Sims in four previous cases. (The four cases were at least 10 years old; Judge Shaughnessy remembered one of the cases, and Sims said he had no recollection of the prior representation.)
In its response, the state said there had been no misconduct, no ineffective assistance, and no need for a recusal. It said that the prosecutor had abided by Judge Shaughnessy’s ruling on the forensic evidence from the earlier shooting and that neither Lundy nor Kooser ever mentioned Sims when testifying about the forensic evidence from that shooting.
The Eighth Appellate District for the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on April 15, 2021. The ruling said that the firearms evidence referenced in the opening statement might have been improper, but Sims suffered little harm.
“Considering the prosecutor’s conduct in the context of the entire trial and balancing the nature of the prosecutor’s remark, the lack of objection or request for a curative instruction, and the strength of the evidence against appellant, we do not find the prosecutor’s conduct prejudicially affected appellant’s substantial rights or denied him a fair trial,” the court ruled.
Beginning in 2021, Kimberly Corral, Sims’s post-conviction attorney, began researching allegations of misconduct by Lundy, after her review of the trial transcript and other documents. She would later write that she thought it was odd that Lundy asked E.C. during an interview whether she was attracted to “thugs.” After filing numerous public-records requests and gathering information, Corral contacted E.C.
In an affidavit dated September 30, 2024, E.C. recanted her trial testimony and said that she and Lundy had been in a romantic relationship that began shortly after Sims’s arrest.
E.C. wrote: “I was interviewed three different times and by the third one me and Kenneth Lundy were already in a sexual relationship … Eventually I said what they wanted me to say—that Jerry Sims was the shooter. Kenneth earned my trust and made me feel like I needed his protection, and he did make me feel like I was being protected. I knew everything that was going on throughout the trial due to Kenneth telling me or showing me. I began to feel like I needed Ken’s protection from Jerry.”
E.C. said Lundy showered her with gifts and trips and allowed her to watch the police videos so she could prepare for her testimony.
E.C. said she became pregnant with Lundy’s child during the summer of 2019, and he insisted that she terminate the pregnancy, because “it would look bad” at trial.
After the trial ended, E.C. said, Lundy became physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive, threatening her with a gun and vandalizing her car. She said she tried to leave him, but Lundy would tell her that Sims was the greater threat. Eventually, she got out of the relationship.
“I am coming forward to disclose the abuse and the manipulation because I am aware that my lies have contributed to someone being in prison,” she wrote.
On January 7, 2025, Corral filed a motion for a new trial that included E.C.’s affidavit. The motion also contained a lengthy history of Lundy’s personnel issues and disciplinary matters and said the state had failed to disclose this impeachment evidence as well as the evidence about Lundy’s relationship with E.C.
One investigation had said that Lundy had lied on a job application with the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority about the reasons for his resignation from a juvenile corrections facility, which occurred during an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct with female inmates.
By the time of Corral’s filing, Lundy had been promoted to police chief in East Cleveland.
During cross-examination at the trial, E.C. had said that she told the police in the first interview that she never saw Sims shoot anyone. The police told her they had a video; she asked them to produce it because it would show she was telling the truth. She also said that she wouldn’t lie for Sims. She testified that she came forward with a full statement on November 7 only after the police asked her about being on the west side of Cleveland, where Montgomery lived.
The petition said the jury never heard that E.C. and Lundy began an “improper exploitative sexual relationship” during that period. “[Lundy] further used his position of trust to instill fear and compel [E.C.] to change her statement,” the petition said.
In an interview with Ideastream Public Media, Lundy acknowledged the affair but said he never pressured E.C. to testify falsely.
“It was never intended to alter her testimony,” Lundy said. “I was there for her emotionally. It probably wasn’t the most professional thing for me to do, but, again, she called me every day for protection. We grew very close.”
At an evidentiary hearing on April 29, 2025, E.C. testified about her relationship with Lundy and said he manipulated her to testify falsely against Sims. After she finished testifying, the state asked Judge Jennifer O’Donnell to grant Sims’s petition.
A prosecutor said: “The defense has the burden here to show by a preponderance of the evidence that this relationship between [E.C.] and then Detective Lundy existed, and would have been potentially exculpatory, and was not disclosed at the time of trial. We acknowledge that they have met that burden.”
O’Donnell threw out Sims’s conviction and then granted a separate motion dismissing his charges. Sims was released from prison that day.
In a statement, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office said it did not know of the relationship. “In light of existing evidence, retrial is not possible at this time. We remain frustrated at the corruption and lack of professionalism that continues to be exhibited by many in the East Cleveland Police Department. An investigation into these matters is ongoing. Stay tuned.”
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 05-20-2025
Last Update Date: 05-20-2025
