DA seeks sanctions against Tabish defense

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000 | 11:12 a.m.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger today asked District Judge Joseph Bonaventure to consider sanctions against defense lawyers in the Ted Binion murder case for filing a "frivolous" motion involving a jailhouse informant.

"It is very apparent that this motion filed by the defense and their request for an evidentiary hearing is an attempt to generate pre-trial publicity that disparages the character and integrity of the prosecution team," Roger wrote in court papers. "The court should not indulge the defendants with this endeavor."

Roger charged that Rick Tabish, one of two people charged with killing Binion in September 1978, "has made reckless and personal accusations" about his ethics.

On Tuesday Tabish's lawyer, Louis Palazzo, and John Momot, the attorney for Tabish's co-defendant, Sandy Murphy, filed a motion alleging that Roger and jail officials placed the informant in a cell block with Tabish to steal the confidential notes prior to the March 13 trial of the two defendants.

But Roger in his motion today said there was no such scheme.

"Defendant's claim that the prosecution was involved in a sinister plot to invade the defense camp is spurious at best," he wrote.

He also submitted a two-page report by a Metro intelligence officer who described how authorities were approached last week by the informant, David Gomez, who according to sources may have been scheming to obtain money from Tabish.

Gomez and Clark County Detention Center officials were among those expected to be subpoenaed for a hearing Friday before Bonaventure on the defense's bid to dismiss the murder charges because of the informant's actions.

Intelligence detectives, the report said, first learned last week that Gomez was in the same protective custody cellblock as Tabish, when Gomez said he had information that Tabish was plotting to kill Binion's gardener, Tom Loveday, a key witness in the murder case.

Gomez, the report said, claimed to have a handwritten note from Tabish indicating he was willing to pay $200,000 to have Loveday killed.

Detectives, however, concluded the note was not written by Tabish, and they dropped the matter, the report said.

"It was our opinion, at this stage that it was highly unlikely that Tabish would have committed any such solicitation for murder in writing and trusted it with a fellow inmate," the intelligence officer wrote. "This fact is coupled with the commonality that it is our experience that jailhouse informants tend to use high-profile figures in an effort to levy preferential treatment in their own favor."

Gomez was described by the intelligence detective as having a lengthy criminal history and an arrest for perjury.

In an affidavit earlier this week, Palazzo charged that jail officials placed Gomez in the same protective custody block as Tabish to gain an unfair advantage before next month's trial.

"Further," Palazzo said, "it is believed that this informant has purloined personal notes and work product documentation relating to the defense of Mr. Tabish in the upcoming trial from Mr. Tabish's cell on behalf of the district attorney's office."

In their motion, Palazzo and Momot said Tabish reported the papers missing last Wednesday.

"The documents at issue include matters impacting upon trial strategy, as well as matters concerning impeachment material of various state witnesses," the defense lawyers wrote.