Jury seated for retrial of Binion murder case

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004 | 9:35 a.m.

The jury is set for the retrial of the most-publicized murder case in Las Vegas history.

After two days of sorting through 180 prospective jurors, by Tuesday night 12 people -- seven men and five women -- had been chosen to decide whether Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy killed gaming figure Ted Binion in 1998.

Binion was found dead in the Las Vegas home he shared with Murphy, after which Tabish was caught digging up Binion's stash of silver in Pahrump. Tabish and Murphy were convicted of the murder in 2000 and were sentenced to life in prison. The Nevada Supreme Court later overturned the convictions.

Prosecutors have maintained that Tabish and Murphy, who were lovers, killed Binion as part of a conspiracy to steal his silver and other assets. Lawyers for Tabish and Murphy have argued that Binion died of a drug overdose.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors today were to work toward selecting five alternate jurors for the trial, with opening arguments expected to follow on Thursday.

The jurors seated for the trial come from a variety of backgrounds and occupations.

defense attorneys had the daunting task of trying to weed out prospective jurors who were truly being honest when they said they could give Tabish and Murphy "a clean slate" and not be influenced by the outcome of the first trial and the media attention that came with it.

On Tuesday, for the second consecutive day, Tabish appeared to have a voice in almost every maneuver made by his attorneys, even conferring with both his lead attorney, Tony Serra, and Murphy's attorney, Michael Cristalli.

"The judge did an outstanding job, and I'm generally happy with the jury selection," Tabish said. "The issue of presumption of innocence has been impregnated within everyone."

On Tuesday Murphy was much more active in court than she had been Monday. She conversed with Cristalli continually throughout the long day in court. At one point Murphy even caught Cristalli before he began questioning a potential juror using a questionnaire of a different person.

Murphy, however, had no comment at the end of the day, saying simply, "I've been told not to talk."

Cristalli was said the jurors selected "are the middle of the road."

"We did our best to get out the extreme personalities, and we are confident with the jury we got," he said.

Prosecutor Robert Daskas agreed, saying, "We're more than satisfied and are just looking forward to presenting our case now."

Bonaventure voiced his frustration toward prospective jurors he suspected might be able to serve, but were instead shirking their civic duty to do so.

Acceptable excuses ranged from people having pre-paid, nonrefundable vacations to those who were suffering financial hardships.