Strohmeyer case about more than confession issue

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 1998 | 10:21 a.m.

While today's arguments in the Jeremy Strohmeyer case were to focus on the legality of three confessions he gave to police about the May 25 rape and slaying of a 7-year-old girl in a Primm casino, there is another issue also to be decided.

It involves the seizure by police of Strohmeyer's computer and the information police retrieved during the next two months of electronic massaging.

The computer and its contents has seldom garnered anything other than spotty references over the seven days of hearings this month challenging the way Long Beach, Calif., and Las Vegas police got the 19-year-old defendant to open up about the murder.

One reason for the clandestine approach is that the information pulled out of the computer's hard drive was ordered sealed by District Judge Don Chairez.

Even court documents bickering over legalities of the seizure offered few clues.

A court brief filed by prosecutors argued that prosecutors seized the computer in part because of information from Strohmeyer's buddy, David Cash Jr., that he had "personally seen pictures and photographs such as the ones in the State's sealed exhibit on Strohmeyer's computer."

The defendant's mother, Winifred Strohmeyer, admitted during her testimony last week that the teenager was on "Internet restriction."

"The type of evidence which Cash told police was on the computer would come from the 'web'," prosecutors stated. "Therefore, there was abundant probable cause for the police to believe that the information they actually did receive from the computer was in the computer at the time they seized it."

Deputy District Attorney Peggy Leen hinted during the hearings that there also was incriminating information in Strohmeyer's writings on his computer.

The problem, according to defense attorneys, is that the police affidavit used to justify the search warrant of Strohmeyer's home in the hours after his May 28 arrest doesn't mention why the computer should be seized.

To obtain a search warrant, police generally are required to show there is probable cause to believe that contraband or incriminating items are in the location to be searched.

A California judge issued the search warrant justifying the confiscation of the computer despite having no reason for its seizure articulated in the affidavit.

In the challenge to the search, Strohmeyer's Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright and California attorney Leslie Abramson noted that the only justification by police was a desire to search "for any evidence related to the murder of Sherrice Iverson."

Prosecutors conceded it is "unfortunate" that the police affidavit didn't detail why the computer was important, but argued in documents that it is unnecessary because Strohmeyer gave his consent to search his room.

Defense attorneys countered that the consent only involved the clothes he wore at the stateline casino.

Prosecutors, calling the slaying "incomprehensibly horrible and depraved even in our increasingly violent modern American society," stated that the seizure was justified based on "common sense and good faith.

But the defense countered that the law requires specifics or anything seized should be suppressed.

"The state, charged with protecting the constitutional liberties of the citizens seeks to subvert them by extreme and unjustifiable legal arguments," defense attorney stated.

Iverson was raped and strangled to death in a women's restroom outside the video arcade at the Primm Valley hotel-casino by a body-pierced man whose image was captured by casino surveillance cameras.

After the videos were broadcast on Southern California television stations, friends of Strohmeyer went to police and identified him as the one in the pictures and some said he had confessed to them that he had committed the murder.

One of those was Cash, who had been with him at the casino on the California-Nevada border, 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

He was arrested as he left his house in Long Beach and gave three statements to police -- two of them tape recorded.

But he testified last week that his confessions came only after his demands to see a lawyer were disregarded by police and while he was under the influence of Dexedrine he took in a suicide attempt.

Police testified during the hearing that Strohmeyer had been told of his right to have an attorney and remain silent, but he gave up those rights and chose to talk.

After arguments today, Chairez will have to determine what evidence the jury gets to see and hear and what details will or won't be released to the media.