Columnist Jeff German: Silencing Tabish’s ex was crucial

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

There's no telling whether Mary Jo Jackson would have changed the outcome of the Ted Binion murder retrial had she been allowed to take the witness stand.

But her testimony would have shed light on the whereabouts of her former husband, Rick Tabish, on the morning of Binion's Sept. 17, 1998, death -- and a lot more.

It would have cast doubt on Tabish's alibi in the minds of the 12 jurors, who last week acquitted Tabish and his co-defendant, Sandy Murphy, of killing the wealthy Binion.

That's what you'll come away with if you read the explosive transcripts of Jackson's Oct. 29 interview with a Metro Police detective.

The transcripts, made public Monday by District Attorney David Roger, are sure to raise questions about whether the jury reached the right verdict, and whether prosecutors should have fought harder to get Jackson on the witness stand in the biggest murder case of all time in Las Vegas.

Tabish, a Montana contractor who hauled sand in Las Vegas, testified that he was nowhere near Binion's home the morning he died. Tabish said he was working on problems at All Star Transit Mix, a sand processing plant in North Las Vegas.

But Jackson, who is fighting to deny Tabish parental rights to the couple's children, told police that her ex-husband made no mention of troubles at All Star when he called her from Las Vegas the afternoon of Sept. 16, 1998.

She said Tabish indicated he was going to spend the night at Binion's house to help Murphy get the drug-addicted casino executive off heroin.

About 10 a.m. the next morning, Jackson said, Tabish called her at work in Missoula and told her that he was "just leaving" Binion's house.

Tabish told Jackson that Binion was "taking a bunch of pills" and that he was going to get out of the house before he overdosed.

Prosecutors have theorized that Binion was already dead by the time of that phone call -- having been pumped with heroin and Xanax and then suffocated.

What Tabish told his ex-wife is similar to what he told Nye County sheriff's deputies when they arrested him for digging up Binion's silver fortune in Pahrump after Binion's death.

Jackson's testimony would have given prosecutors a credible witness to bolster the weakest part of their circumstantial case against Tabish -- placing him at Binion's home.

Chief Deputy District Attorneys Christopher Lalli and Robert Daskas argued that case law outside Nevada allowed them to call Jackson as a rebuttal witness without interfering with the marital privilege, which bars a husband and wife from disclosing their private conversations in court.

But in refusing to let Jackson testify, District Judge Joseph Bonaventure based his ruling on something closer to home, a Nevada Supreme Court case.

We don't know exactly how the arguments went because the status of this pivotal witness was resolved behind closed doors in the judge's chambers, away from public scrutiny.

Lalli and Daskas were furious with the judge's decision and considered appealing to the high court as the retrial was winding down.

But unsure of whether they would prevail on the issue and not wanting to alienate the judge before he decided important jury instructions, the prosecutors opted against shining a light on Bonaventure's ruling.

They gambled and lost -- and paid a high price for it.

As for Mary Jo Jackson, she still may get a chance to tell a jury what she knows about her former husband's whereabouts on the morning of Binion's death.

If Binion's estate pursues its civil wrongful death suit against Tabish and Murphy as vigorously as it pushed for the criminal charges, the debate over whether the marital privilege applies here will resurface sooner than you think.

Another jury could get a very different picture of Binion's demise.