Attorneys for Tabish take stand

Friday, Feb. 11, 2000 | 11:16 a.m.

Defense lawyers in the Ted Binion murder case today attempted to persuade District Judge Joseph Bonaventure that a jailhouse informant stole personal notes from one of the defendants.

Taking the witness stand in an unusual evidentiary hearing, attorney Louis Palazzo, who represents Binion defendant Rick Tabish, called the alleged theft "devastating" to the defense.

Palazzo accused the informant, David Gomez, of stealing the papers and providing them to law enforcement authorities, including the team prosecuting Tabish and his co-defendant, Sandy Murphy.

The papers allegedly stolen include handwritten notes by Tabish analyzing statements from key witnesses, Palazzo testified.

"There's no recovering from it," Palazzo said, when questioned under oath by Murphy's lawyer, John Momot. "It would be like me sitting down with the prosecutor and telling him what I'm going to do in this case. Who would do that in their right mind?"

But under cross-examination from Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger, the lead prosecutor in the case, Palazzo acknowledged that he never did any investigation, including contacting the district attorney's office, before filing a motion this week aimed at getting the murder charges dismissed.

Roger today called the motion a "waste of precious court time" and reiterated the prosecution did not plant Gomez in the same cellblock with Tabish.

He asked Bonaventure on Thursday to consider sanctions against Palazzo and Momot for filing what he called a "frivolous" motion involving Gomez.

"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.

Earlier this week Palazzo and Momot had alleged that Roger and jail officials placed Gomez in a cell block with Tabish to steal the confidential notes prior to the March 13 trial of the two defendants.

But Roger responded in writing that 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.

Roger also submitted a two-page report by a Metro intelligence officer who described how authorities were approached Gomez.

Intelligence detectives, the report said, first learned last week that Gomez was in the same protective custody area 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 hand-written note from Tabish indicating he was willing to pay $200,0000 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.

In his motion 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."

Palazzo also filed a motion this week asking Bonaventure to reconsider giving Tabish bail.

And the lawyer gave written notice that Tabish intends to rely on an alibi defense at his trial.

The notice said Tabish was at All Star Transit Mix in North Las Vegas at the time of Binion's death.

Palazzo listed several witnesses, mostly employees of Tabish and All Star Transit Mix, who could place Tabish at the cement company from 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, 1998, the day prosecutors allege Binion was killed.

Among those named as a witness was Steven Wadkins, All Star's owner and co-defendant in an alleged plot to torture a Las Vegas businessman two months before Binion's slaying.

Prosecutors believe Binion was killed between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. at his 2408 Palomino Lane home.

Murphy, who has acknowledged being at the home that morning, has not filed a notice of an alibi defense.