Paid witnesses, Binion’s shirt topics at hearing

Monday, Sept. 13, 2004 | 9:01 a.m.

What criteria was used for paying witnesses in the 2001 trial of the one-time couple accused of killing casino executive Ted Binion and what happened to the shirt Binion was wearing the day he died?

Those questions were the focus of Friday's hearing for Rick Tabish and Sandy Murphy, who are charged with murder in connection with Binion's death.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure said he would not issue a ruling on the paid witness issue until Oct. 7, at which time both the defense and prosecutors would offer arguments.

Bonaventure said a ruling regarding Binion's shirt would be placed on hold until Dr. Michael Baden, a well-known forensic pathologist who was the chief medical witness for the prosecution in the 2001 trial, could testify.

In an effort to avoid making Baden have to come to Clark County twice to testify, Bonaventure said he would have Baden testify as to the shirt outside the presence of the jury during the same time frame he is scheduled to testify at trial, which is scheduled to begin Oct. 11.

Tabish's lead attorney, J. Tony Serra, contends the shirt was a crucial part of the case because the prosecution alleges the buttons from shirt were the cause of the abrasions found on Binion's body.

At the first trial Baden testified that circular red marks on Binion's chest were the result of pressure from someone trying to suffocate him by an 18th-century method called burking, in which pressure is put on the chest as the nose and mouth are covered.

Serra has said that without the shirt the prosecution's burking theory would be difficult to prove or disprove.

In Baden's absence Friday, Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy served as the key witness as to why Binion's shirt was missing. Michael Murphy said it was not the office's responsibility to "retain clothing" and the shirt would have only been taken as evidence if a homicide police officer decided to do so.

The coroner reasoned because Binion's death was not originally determined to be a homicide, no officers came to retrieve the clothes as evidence. He said the coroner's office followed the correct "chain of custody" in sending the shirt to the mortuary with Binion's body.

Larry Neubaurer, who worked at the mortuary that received Binion's body, acknowledged receiving a shirt, but said it was a gray and white striped one, not the brown and white shirt identified by the coroner's office in reports and photos.

The other key matter Friday was Tabish and Murphy's lawyers' allegations that witnesses from the first trial were rewarded explicitly for their testimony.

In questioning the criteria the Binion estate used to pay eight witnesses a share of $100,000 after the first trial, Tabish and Murphy's attorneys called Steven Gratzer and Richard Wright.

Grazter, who received $20,000 from the Binion estate after the first trial, said he was paid because he "cooperated fully and voluntarily" with the prosecution. Gratzer, however, said if he would have said Murphy was innocent he didn't think he would have received any money.

Gratzer said he specifically recalled being told by Metro officers not "to tell information pertinent to Sandy Murphy's innocence."

But Gratzer also said both Wall and Roger on separate occasions told him he "stood to be rewarded" for his cooperation, but not for testifying one way or another.

Attorney Richard Wright, a friend of Binion's who assisted in the handling of Binion's estate, said the only person who truly knew what the criteria used for the witness payments was former federal judge and longtime Binion attorney, Harry Claiborne. Claiborne died Jan. 19.

Wright said although Claiborne did ask for the opinions of Wright as well as the District Attorneys Office and Private Investigator Tom Dillard, Claiborne was essentially "a one-man committee" and made all the decisions on the dissemination of the reward money.

Wright said in his opinion witnesses weren't paid based on testimony because two of the eight witnesses who were paid never even took the stand.