Clashes continue over suspects’ secret hearing

Monday, Feb. 26, 2001 | 11:25 a.m.

District Judge Kathy Hardcastle today chided a defense lawyer representing one of the Bellagio robbery suspects for complaining about the unusual courtroom procedures in the security-heightened case.

An irritated Hardcastle told attorney Peter Christiansen to "move on" several times as he voiced objections to the way his client, Luis Suarez, has been treated.

But the judge said she would provide an explanation about the security concerns in the case at a future date, as long as Christiansen didn't complain in open court again.

"We're operating from a blind-spot. I want to know why my client is being treated differently," Christiansen said after the 20-minute hearing, which was held in the camera-friendly courtroom of Justice of the Peace Jennifer Togliatti.

Togliatti's courtroom has an experimental video hookup to the Clark County Detention Center.

Suarez and his co-defendant, Jose Manuel Vigoa, who are charged in the June 3 Bellagio robbery, participated in the hearing from the detention center with the help of videocameras. An interpreter also was on hand at the jail for Suarez.

Both men are suspects in a string of other violent Strip heists and a botched armored truck robbery in Henderson that killed two guards.

The unusual arrangement for the high-profile case allowed the public and the media to watch the defendants through a large television monitor in the courtroom. Prosecutors and defense lawyers also had computer screens to view their clients.

Last month Hardcastle, worried about courthouse safety because of the notoriety of the defendants, held a secret hearing in the Bellagio case at the detention center without notifying the public.

Her last-minute decision drew courthouse criticism and prompted lawyers on both sides of the case to suggest that the public should have access at the next hearing.

Jail officials have publicly declined to discuss their security concerns about the two defendants. But police reportedly received intelligence information early in the case that armed associates of the suspects might try to free them during a court appearance.

A July preliminary hearing for Vigoa and another co-defendant Oscar Cisneros Sanchez, who later committed suicide in the jail, was held in Hardcastle's courtroom under some of the tightest security measures ever witnessed at the courthouse. Metro SWAT officers were stationed in the courtroom and officers with assault rifles roamed the courthouse, as the hearing took place.

At last month's hearing, SWAT officers were placed inside a fifth-floor conference room at the detention center, where the proceeding took place. Vigoa was escorted to the hearing wearing handcuffs, chains, oversized mittens and a stun belt.

Hardcastle today, above the objections of defense lawyers, allowed prosecutors to compel Vigoa and Suarez to have their faces photographed and videotaped.

The FBI has agreed to make high-tech comparisons of those images to those captured on surveillance videos during robberies at the Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, New York-New York and MGM Grand hotel-casinos.

Prosecutors are trying to tie the suspects to the other Strip heists.