Strohmeyer takes his appeal to federal courts

Kim Smith

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2002 | 9:24 a.m.

Jeremy Strohmeyer, who pleaded guilty to raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in a case that drew national attention, has filed an appeal in U.S. District Court.

The 23-year-old Strohmeyer claims in a writ filed Jan. 31 that his attorneys were ineffective and that his guilty plea was "unlawfully induced."

The claims were rejected by District Judge Joseph Bonaventure and the Nevada Supreme Court when Strohmeyer asked that he be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea in connection with the May 1997 death of Sherrice Iverson.

Although Strohmeyer confessed to raping and killing the girl at then Primadonna hotel at Primm, he later said he blacked out during the episode and does not know what happened to the girl.

Now, just as he did in his appeals to Bonaventure and the Nevada Supreme Court, Strohmeyer is saying his former attorneys -- Richard Wright and Leslie Abramson -- coerced him into pleading guilty.

Strohmeyer alleges that until his parents got into a dispute with Wright over fees, Wright and Abramson had him believing that certain evidence found by police was not insurmountable.

Once the fee dispute was discussed they began pressuring him to take a deal, now saying the evidence was extremely damning, Strohmeyer said. They said he would likely be convicted and executed for the crime if he failed to enter a plea.

The attorneys, Strohmeyer said, also told him that even if acquitted on the murder charge the judge would sentence him to a minimum of 75 years in prison for the rape and he would not be eligible for parole until he was 93, Strohmeyer said.

However, the judge could have given him concurrent sentences and he would be eligible for parole at 43.

Had he known he could have received the lesser sentence Strohmeyer said he would have gone to trial.

Calls to Strohmeyer's local attorney, Carmine Colucci, and to the Nevada attorney general's office, which is now handling the case, were not returned.