Prosecutor frustrated in new postponement in murder case

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 9:51 a.m.

A prosecutor says he is so fed up with defense lawyers delaying the case of a 29-year-old man charged with murder that he will take the unusual step of trying to move the case to a grand jury.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Ed Kane decided to do that after James Valdez's lawyer on Wednesday convinced Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Tony Abbatangelo to postpone Valdez's preliminary hearing to March 9.

Valdez was arrested Nov. 8 in the fatal stabbing of 31-year-old Teresa Tilden, whose 12-year-old son, Shiloh Edsitty, was also stabbed but survived.

Wednesday's postponement was the second 11th hour delay for Valdez's preliminary hearing. The first time was in December.

In court on Wednesday on behalf of Valdez's lead attorney, Michael Cristalli, was attorney Marc Saggese, who requested the preliminary hearing be postponed because, Saggese said, he had not received about 200 pages of court documents from the discovery phase of the case until 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

Kane took issue with Saggese's reason for the postponement. The prosecutor said Cristalli's secretary had called Kane on Tuesday morning and said that "due to an office error" Cristalli was out of town and unable to attend Wednesday's hearing.

Kane also said he couldn't understand how discovery could be an issue saying "at no time since Cristalli took over the case has anyone from his office contacted me."

"I have never had a case as snake-bit as this one as per getting to a preliminary hearing," Kane said. "I'm tired of this and will probably go to the grand jury before the new preliminary hearing date."

Wednesday marked the second time Abbatangelo reluctantly granted a motion to reschedule Valdez's preliminary hearing based upon alleged problems with discovery.

On Dec. 21 Valdez's former attorney, James Barfield, requested the postponement of the hearing that was supposed to happen that day. Barfield said the District Attorney's office had failed to give him discovery materials. Although the request was granted, Barfield was both lectured as to how the discovery process works and ordered to pay the for the plane ticket of a prosecution witness who had been flown to Las Vegas from Reno to testify at that Dec. 21 hearing.

In response to Barfield's claim Kane said "every attorney in Clark County" knows that after the initial discovery is handed over to the defense it is then the defense attorney's responsibility to regularly check the case file to see if more reports, evidence or information has become part of the case.

Valdez is charged with murder in connection with Tilden's death and is charged with attempted murder in connection with the stabbing of Edsitty, who spent more than three weeks in the hospital.

The two were attacked at Camden Tiara apartment complex, 2810 E. Warm Springs Road. En route to the hospital, Edsitty, a sixth grader at Schofield Middle School, told authorities that Valdez attacked him and his mother, police said.