Columnist Jeff German: Appeal time for Murphy, Tabish

Friday, July 6, 2001 | 3:32 a.m.

Jeff German is the Sun's senior investigative reporter. He can be reached at (702) 259-4067 or by e-mail at german@lasvegassun.com.

THIS IS SHAPING UP as a big week for the convicted killers of wealthy casino boss Ted Binion.

On Friday (the 13th) attorneys for Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, among them Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, have a deadline to file their appeal briefs with the Nevada Supreme Court.

But prior to that, Murphy's lawyer, Herb Sachs, says he expects to file a motion to toss out the convictions because of alleged misconduct on the part of the Binion prosecutors.

He'll be filing the motion without the signature of Tabish's attorney, Bill Terry, who prefers to put all of his effort into the appeal brief.

Terry had been contemplating a run for district attorney in 2002, but he took himself out of the race for financial reasons.

Without politics on his mind, he'll be free now to concentrate on Tabish's appeal.

Sachs, meanwhile, has been fine-tuning his motion to dismiss the case against Murphy for more than a month. He plans to hold back no punches when he goes after Chief Deputy District Attorneys David Roger and David Wall, the prosecutors who obtained both murder convictions.

Roger and Wall, regarded as straight arrows at the district attorney's office, hardly seem worried.

They're expecting Sachs to put a new twist on several old issues previously discarded by District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, who presided over the well-publicized murder trial.

Sachs already has suggested that he's not counting on much help from Bonaventure.

Still, the veteran lawyer is doing his best to stir things up in the case for Murphy, who is serving 22 years in prison.

Sachs has made it known that he's counting on at least two familiar faces in the case -- key prosecution witness Steven Kurt Gratzer and jailhouse snitch David Gomez.

Gratzer, sentenced last month to 13 months behind bars for a drug conviction, has given Sachs a sworn affidavit in which he alleges Roger deliberately left out statements Gratzer made suggesting Murphy knew nothing about the plot to kill the 55-year-old Binion.

Gratzer testified at the trial that Tabish had solicited his help in killing Binion to gain access to his millions. The one-time Tabish friend later received $20,000 in reward money from Binion's $55 million estate for his role in the case.

Both the 29-year-old Murphy, who was Binion's live-in girlfriend, and Tabish, her 36-year-old lover, were convicted May 2000 of pumping Binion with drugs and suffocating him at his home on Sept. 17, 1998.

Sachs charges that prosecutors violated his client's right to a fair trial by not disclosing Gratzer's reported statements about her innocence prior to the trial.

Roger calls the allegation ludicrous and is ready to defend his actions in court if necessary.

He's also prepared to take apart the Gomez claim that the prosecutor conspired with jail officials to plant the informant in the same cell block as Tabish to steal Tabish's trial notes.

Previous defense efforts to use Gomez failed when the three-time convicted felon took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify on the witness stand.

Sachs insists the district attorney's office also is violating Murphy's rights by not seeking immunity for Gomez so that the snitch's claims of prosecutorial misconduct can be resolved once and for all.

And he's ready to go to the mat to make his point.