Pope defense has one more chance at juvenile trial

Kim Smith

Wednesday, May 17, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

Defense attorneys for a 15-year-old boy accused of killing his father were unsuccessful Tuesday in an attempt to get his case heard in a juvenile courtroom, but they still have one more chance.

Nevada law dictates that children accused of murder or attempted murder be tried as adults. Deputy Special Public Defenders Kristina Wildeveld and Dayvid Figler, however, contend Conan Pope falls into two exceptions to that law.

The law states that children who suffer from behavioral and/or substance abuse problems can be handled in the juvenile system, which is geared toward rehabilitation instead of punishment.

The attorneys further believe that if prosecutors had told grand jurors everything they knew about the Pope case, grand jurors may have opted to indict him on a manslaughter charge or not indict him at all.

Juveniles indicted on manslaughter charges must be handled in the juvenile system.

Deputy District Attorney Melisa de la Garza told District Judge Mark Gibbons that the statute the defense attorneys are applying in the Pope case only pertains to those cases that start in the juvenile system. The Pope case has been handled in the adult system from the beginning.

Gibbons agreed with de la Garza, but scheduled a hearing for this morning to rehear the defense attorneys' argument that the grand jury should be given the opportunity to reconsider their indictment at a new hearing.

Pope's attorneys say the boy shot his father because he was walking toward his older sister's bedroom holding a broom in a menacing manner moments after a volatile argument over dirty dishes.

De la Garza, however, says Pope killed Frank Pope, 62, in cold blood, noting that the sister, Desiree, told police she heard Pope tell his father he was going to shoot him seconds before the fatal shots.

Wildeveld wants grand jurors to hear that Frank Pope served time for murdering an infant daughter in 1962. She also wants them to be aware of police and Child Protective Service investigations conducted on Frank Pope in Colorado and Nevada.

None of those things were introduced into evidence by prosecutors, despite the fact a local newspaper had a front page story about the murder conviction one week before the grand jury met and all of the attorneys discussed it, Figler told Gibbons.

There have been cases in which battered women have proven a pattern of abuse and have been acquitted on first-degree murder charges even though they were not in imminent danger. In one such case, the woman's batterer was asleep.

Gibbons told Figler he seems to recall Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Laurent telling him at a previous hearing that he didn't know about the murder conviction. Laurent, however, was not present at Tuesday's hearing to tell the judge exactly what he knew and at what point.

Gibbons scheduled today's hearing so he would have time to go over transcripts from that hearing and hear from Laurent. De la Garza argued the grand jury may still return a murder indictment because the murder conviction is almost 40 years old and Desiree Pope denies any abuse.

There is no pattern, de la Garza said.

Kim Smith

covers courts for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2321 or by e-mail at kimberly@lasvegassun.com