Hearing set to determine lawyers in old death penalty case

Sandra Chereb

Friday, March 3, 2000 | 2:26 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Prosecutors haven't decided whether to retry a man whose conviction and death sentence for killing a judge's son 22 years ago was canceled by the Nevada Supreme Court.

"We are still going back to the old evidence, finding the old witnesses," Tom Barb, chief deputy district attorney, said Friday of the legal proceedings spurred by the Supreme Court's ruling on the conviction of Jack Mazzan.

Mazzan, 53, has been on Nevada's death row for two decades for the 1978 murder of Richard Minor Jr. The victim was the son of then Reno Justice of the Peace Richard C. Minor, who later became a district court judge.

In January, the Supreme Court returned the case to state court, saying prosecutors withheld crucial evidence at Mazzan's trial.

The justices did not bar prosecutors from retrying the case, but left the door open for defense lawyers to try to block a new trial by arguing Mazzan's conviction was unfair and that evidence needed for an adequate defense is "stale."

Barb said some evidence contained body fluids and those items will be submitted to a lab for DNA testing - a technique not available 20 years ago.

During a brief procedure Friday, Washoe District Judge Peter Breen set March 31 for arguments on whether Las Vegas lawyers JoNell Thomas and Robert Langford will represent Mazzan.

Thomas and Langford already have filed two dozen motions since the Supreme Court's ruling, including one to have the case against Mazzan dismissed or to grant him bail.

"I've been Mr. Mazzan's attorney for four years now," Thomas said. Outside the courtroom, she noted that Mazzan has demanded a speedy trial within 60 days and said a new lawyer could not prepare for the case in that time.

Barb, accompanied by Washoe County District Attorney Dick Gammick, told the judge that Mazzan should be represented by the public defender's office, which generally handles indigent defendants.

Though Thomas and Langford said they would represent Mazzan for free, Barb said the county still would be responsible for defense investigative and other peripheral costs - expenses budgeted for by the public defender's office.

Thomas estimated investigative costs could exceed $100,000.

Breen, who presided over Mazzan's first trial, also will decide at the March 31 hearing whether Langford, a former Clark County prosecutor, and Thomas are qualified to handle a death penalty case as required under Nevada law.

In the appeal, the Supreme Court agreed that defense lawyers were not given a full police report two decades ago. Then-District Attorney Cal Dunlap or his chief deputy at the time, Mills Lane, withheld a report on out-of-state drug dealers with an apparent motive to kill Minor.

The files with the damning disclosures surfaced only a few years ago in response to a subpoena from the state public defender's office.

Mazzan insisted he stayed at Minor's apartment the night of the murder because his car wouldn't start, and awoke to see two unidentified men leaving after the killing.

At his trial, defense witnesses testified Minor was involved in marijuana trafficking and feared for his safety because of a drug deal gone bad.