Judge refuses to bar media and public from suppression hearing

Monday, Jan. 26, 1998 | 3:09 a.m.

District Judge Donald Chairez rejected a defense motion to close the suppression hearing, which began Monday and is expected to take at least three days.

Defense attorneys Leslie Abramson and Richard Wright are seeking to bar a confession made by Jeremy Strohmeyer, 19, of Long Beach, Calif., after he was arrested May 28.

Strohmeyer is charged with murder and sexual assault in the death of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson of Los Angeles, whose body was found in a restroom at the Primm Valley Hotel southwest of Las Vegas on May 25. Authorities said the girl had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

Todd Bice, an attorney for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, argued that defense attorneys had to demonstrate "a compelling interest" to close the hearing, and had not done so. And he said the confession was "out in the public domain."

Defense attorneys inadvertently released a copy of Strohmeyer's confession to a Review-Journal reporter last year, then failed in efforts to prevent the newspaper from publishing it.

"They slammed the door in our face" and then put the confession on the Internet, Ms. Abramson said of appeals to prevent the newspaper from publishing the confession.

In Monday's hearing, Wright said the public and the media should be excluded from the suppression hearing because they have "no constitutional right to inadmissable evidence."

Defense attorneys want to suppress statements Strohmeyer made to Long Beach Police and what he said at Long Beach Community Medical Center, where he was taken following an apparent suicide attempt the night he was arrested.

William Brown, a registered nurse in the hospital's psychiatric section, said he evaluated Strohmeyer after he was brought to the hospital for treatment of an overdose of the drug Dexadrine.

Brown said he learned Strohmeyer had taken 37 of the pills in an apparent suicide attempt.

The nurse said he asked Strohmeyer why he attempted suicide and he replied "I've been accused of a heinous crime."

He said he asked Strohmeyer if he was still suicidal and the teen-ager replied "No, I've got that out of my system."

Brown said Strohmeyer appeared distraught, depressed and tearful.

Brown said Strohmeyer talked to him for 15 minutes in the presence of two Long Beach police officers as he sought to evaluate the teen's mental state. Brown said he did not tell Strohmeyer that he had the right as a patient to make his comments without the officers present.