Lisle defense rips teens’ testimony

Bill Gang

Thursday, April 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Jury deliberations continued today in the murder trial of two men charged in the shooting death of the 19-year-old son of the then-North Las Vegas Police Chief.

Kevin Lisle, 25, and Jerry Lopez, 26, face the possibility of death sentences if they are convicted of slaying Justin Lusch, whose body was left beside a dusty road in northwest Las Vegas in August 1994.

The jury in District Judge Sally Loehrer's courtroom deliberated about two hours Wednesday after defense attorneys and prosecutors sparred during closing arguments over the credibility of witnesses against the pair.

The key witnesses said Lisle and Lopez confessed to them that they took Lusch to an isolated spot near Lone Mountain and shot him to death because they had perceived him to be a "snitch" who had not paid them for drugs.

Lisle was said to be the triggerman who bragged that Lusch was "a rat and I'm glad I did it," Deputy District Attorney Dan Seaton said.

Lopez, according to one witness, admitted he watched the killing in the rear view mirror of the car.

But defense attorneys attacked two witnesses as teenagers who traded their testimony in the Lusch murder and another slaying for treatment as juveniles and guarantees of probation.

Deputy Public Defender Ralph Baker said the teenagers saved their own skins in the deal but argued that their testimony was tainted by inaccuracies that, he argued, indicated they weren't telling the truth.

Lopez's attorney, David Schieck, noted that footprints found at the murder scene match the shoes of another teenager, who wasn't charged in the case.

Lisle already has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the October 1994 shooting death of Kip Logan after a traffic altercation on the U.S. 95 Expressway at Valley View Boulevard.

It was the two teenagers with him during that murder who plea bargained their involvement to become state's witnesses.