Judge orders all snitch documents given to Tabish

Tuesday, July 25, 2000 | 11:32 a.m.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure has ordered Clark County Detention Center officials to give Rick Tabish's attorney all documents pertaining to a jailhouse snitch.

Defense attorney William Terry wants every document relating to David Gomez so he can use them in Tabish's motion for a new trial. The Clark County District attorney's office had told jail officials not to turn them over without a court order, and Bonaventure issued his order this morning after a brief hearing.

Tabish and his girlfriend, Sandy Murphy, were convicted May 19 of killing gambling figure Ted Binion on Sept. 17, 1998, and stealing portions of his fortune. They were given life sentences with the possibility of parole after 20 years, but face an additional 75 and 61 years, respectively, for other crimes committed as part of the plot.

The pair are scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 8, but Wednesday is the deadline for their attorneys to ask for a new trial.

According to police, Gomez told police prior to trial that he had a note from Tabish in which Tabish said he was willing to pay $200,000 to have Binion's gardener, Tom Loveday, killed.

Prosecutors believe that Murphy and Tabish forced Binion to take a fatal dose of Xanax and heroin, but then resorted to suffocating Binion because Loveday unknowingly interrupted them.

Loveday testified during the trial that on the day of Binion's death all of the blinds in the Binion home were closed.

The defense attorneys accused the prosecutors of planting Gomez in a cell block near Tabish, but when detectives decided that the note Gomez had was not written by Tabish, the matter was dropped.