St. Paul Vice Cop Reprimanded By Federal Judge

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- A veteran St. Paul police sergeant is being investigated after a federal appeals court said she was not truthful in a major sex trafficking case.

Sgt. Heather Weyker is on paid-administrative leave. A St. Paul police spokesman says the internal affairs unit has launched an investigation to see if Weyker lied under oath to a grand jury.

Weyker has been an active member of the sex crimes unit for some 20 years and served as a member of the FBI's Sex Crimes Task Force, which was looking into the case in question.

That case involves Somali teens and young men from the Twin Cities who were indicted in an alleged conspiracy involving a sex-trafficking ring.

Sgt. Weyker interviewed female victims in the case, helping federal prosecutors win indictments against 30 defendants.

But her work on the case is now being questioned by a federal court in Tennessee.

"She's always had my respect, so it was shocking to me to read those things. And I've never read those types of things in any opinion with respect to the work of a police officer," Minneapolis defense attorney Gary Wolf said.

The case was tried in Nashville, Tennessee, where the first defendants were arrested back in 2009. In an opinion just handed down, three judges on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals blasted the government's handling of the case.

"When nine defendants go to verdict, six of them are acquitted by a jury and the other three are granted motions of judgement of acquittal, I think that tells you a lot about the government's case," Wolf said. "It's very thin, it's very thin."

Wolf's client still awaits trial along with the remaining 16 defendants. He is shocked by the appellate judge's scathing reprimand of Weyker, who is accused of trying to make one of the victims in the case appear more sympathetic.

The court said Sgt. Weyker, "likely exaggerated or fabricated important aspects of this story." They also wrote in the 24-page opinion, "The district court caught Weyker lying to the grand jury."

Defense attorneys in the initial trial in 2012 said that Weyker "lied on an application to get the victim's family money from a victim's compensation fund."

St. Paul police are not commenting on the scope of the internal investigation, but Ramsey County Attorney John Choi is already reviewing past cases where Weyker was involved.