Tabish lawyers seek FBI documents

Monday, April 22, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

Defense lawyers for Rick Tabish, one of Ted Binion's convicted killers, are trying to drag the FBI into the well-publicized murder case.

On Friday San Francisco attorney J. Tony Serra filed court papers on Tabish's behalf asking Chief District Judge Mark Gibbons to force the FBI to turn over any documents supporting a 1999 FBI affidavit that suggested there may have been other suspects in Binion's slaying.

Serra told Gibbons he wants every bit of information the FBI has on the former casino executive's death so that he can prepare a motion seeking to overturn Tabish's conviction based on newly discovered evidence.

Serra also asked the judge to order Binion estate lawyers Richard Wright, Harry Claiborne and James J. Brown to turn over documents relating to $100,000 in reward money the estate handed out to prosecution witnesses after Tabish and his co-defendant, Sandy Murphy, were convicted in 2000 of killing Binion.

Defense lawyers are hoping to show that prosecutors conspired with the $55 million estate to give witnesses monetary incentives to testify against Tabish and Murphy.

Both the FBI and the Binion lawyers have refused to provide the defense with the requested information, Serra said.

" ... the defense is respectfully requesting that this court compel disclosure in the instant action of this new material evidence because both the federal government and the Binion estate are in possession of information of significant exculpatory value to the defense," Serra wrote in his papers.

"Failure to do so will further impede and jeopardize Mr. Tabish's due process rights and his liberty."

The 62-page FBI affidavit, written by Agent Gerald McIntosh, was secretly submitted to then U.S. District Judge Johnnie Rawlinson on Dec. 13, 1999, to obtain permission to conduct wiretaps on a criminal organization that may have had knowledge of Binion's death.

At the time police already had arrested Tabish and Murphy in Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, slaying.

The affidavit was filed publicly in federal court on Oct. 23 in a criminal case stemming from the 1999 wiretaps, but sealed again the next day after the Sun obtained a copy and disclosed its existence.

McIntosh said in the affidavit that a confidential informant provided him with information about Binion's demise.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger said he doubted that the FBI turned up any meaningful evidence in the slaying, because agents would have shared that information with him long ago.

"This is just another defense fishing expedition," Roger said. "These allegations do not exonerate Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy. If true, this would only expand the list of conspirators who murdered Ted Binion.

"The two people who were directly responsible for Binion's death are locked up in the Nevada prison system."

Wright and Claiborne said they would have no problem turning over information about the reward to the defense if Gibbons issued such an order.

Both said the district attorney's office was not involved in splitting up the $100,000, which was shared by seven prosecution witnesses.

"We had a right to offer a reward, and we did it," Claiborne said. "We had no reason to involve the district attorney."