Jurors put stock in medical experts

Molly Ball

Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2004 | 10:04 a.m.

The jurors who handed down a not guilty verdict Tuesday for the pair accused of murdering casino heir Ted Binion put the most stock in the testimony of the many medical experts they heard, the jurors said afterward.

"I think that, yes, the medical evidence, and the number of doctors involved in testifying that it was not a murder, that it was an overdose," was the deciding factor in acquitting Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish, the jury forewoman said.

The seven men and five women on the jury found it hard to believe that Binion, a heroin addict, was blameless in his own death, another juror said.

"The lifestyle that Ted lived made it hard for us," he said. "That had a lot to do with it."

The jurors, who did not want to give their names, said they were heavily influenced by the fact that nine medical experts testified to the defense lawyers' theory -- that Binion died by ingesting large quantities of heroin and antidepressant pills -- while only one expert testified that suffocation caused the death, as prosecutors theorized.

Prosecutors argued that Murphy and Tabish used an unusual method called "burking" -- which involves sitting on person's chest and covering his nose and mouth.

It was the quantity of experts on each side, rather than what they said, that impressed the jury, the forewoman said.

The defense's success came from "not so much a particular medical expert as the fact that there was nine," she said.

Another juror said the prosecution "could have presented a better case," saying, "Why couldn't they have more experts?"

The forewoman said the jury came to consensus patiently and civilly, with "a couple of heated discussions" and some "raising of voices" but without any screaming.

The verdict on the murder charge was the last thing the jurors said they were able to agree on. Murphy and Tabish were found guilty of burglary and grand larceny.

But despite their unanimous verdict after two and a half days of deliberations, the jurors didn't necessarily agree on whether Murphy and Tabish were outright innocent.

The forewoman -- a state employee and married mother of two -- said the jurors weren't persuaded that the evidence presented by the prosecution met the legal standard.

"We all felt...that there was reasonable doubt," she said. "We had to go with a not guilty."

But another juror went further, saying that Binion's death "just did not seem like a murder."

The jurors said they asked to rehear testimony of a fingerprint expert on Monday because individual jurors had different recollections of what had been said.

They said they were initially troubled by the fact that no fingerprints were found on various items in the room where Binion's body was found, including lighters, pill bottles and a pack of cigarettes. Prosecutors said that meant Murphy and Tabish must have wiped the objects clean after staging the overdose.

But after rehearing the testimony, the jurors were persuaded by the defense's argument: the evidence showed only that no fingerprints could be detected, nothing more. Fingerprints on the items could have been smudged or otherwise undetectable, the jurors concluded.

The jurors said they had little difficulty finding that Murphy and Tabish conspired to steal. Tabish was caught digging up Binion's silver vault in Pahrump the day after the death.

Jurors cited phone calls that day between Tabish and Murphy and said they weren't swayed by Tabish's testimony that Binion told him to recover the silver.

"It didn't matter whether Ted told him to do it or not," one of the men on the jury said. "He (Tabish) shouldn't have been there."

Tabish testified in his own defense in the trial, one main change from the pair's initial trial. Jurors said they didn't take everything he said as fact simply because it came from his mouth, but his testimony -- however inconsistent -- didn't hurt him.

The jurors said they would have liked to have heard Murphy testify as well.