Retrial in murder case will be delayed until October

By Matt Pordum (contact)

Tuesday, March 1, 2005 | 8:37 a.m.

A murder defendant who was granted a mistrial last week won't be retried until October because his defense lawyer said he needs more time to conduct further investigation.

Shod Walker is to be tried again on Oct. 10 before District Judge John McGroarty. Authorities allege that Walker used a 44-pound rock to bludgeon former model Simone Hirst. The 39-year-old woman from Utah was celebrating her birthday in Las Vegas when she allegedly went to buy drugs and was killed.

Walker's first trial was declared a mistrial after a juror used a coconut and rock to test the prosecution's theory about the killing.

McGroarty said Monday that he was not pleased about not being able to start the re-trail sooner, especially after Chief Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas said he would be prepared to start again next week.

Daskas said that because of a stacked trial calendar, if the trial didn't start in a week neither he nor Chief Deputy District Attorney Pam Weckerly would be able to handle the trial until October.

Daskas had no comment on the new trial date other than to say that he and Weckerly were prepared to start in one week.

Walker's attorney, Greg Denue, however, said he would need to fully read the transcripts of the first trial and conduct a new investigation based on issue that came out during the trial.

Denue said his biggest issue would be locating a man named Roy Butler, who told police he saw a woman fitting Hirst's description between 7 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. on the morning of her death, eating Vienna sausages at an Easy Market.

Denue was unable to locate Butler so he could testify at the first trial, but did introduce Butler's police statement into evidence during the trial.

"Based on comments from jurors after the trial, they made it clear they wanted more information on who this other woman could have been. "If Mr. Butler could be found and could re-affirm that Simone (Hirst) was the woman he saw, it could lead to an acquittal."

If Butler's story is true, it would support Walker's argument that he was with Hirst that morning but left her around 6:30 a.m. after she had fallen out of a window, three feet off the ground, in the laundry room of an apartment complex at 11th Street and Stewart Avenue.

Daskas has said Butler's story is meaningless because he told police the blonde woman he saw was someone he saw every day and was close to 20-years-old. He said Hirst was a 39-year-old tourist, someone Butler would obviously not see every day.

Denue also said his defense could be bolstered if he was given more time to examine the testimony of Dr. Rexene Worrell of the Clark County coroner's office. Worrell said Hirst's autopsy revealed she suffered a depressed skull fracture and a more serious hinge fracture. It's the type of is normally seen in injuries stemming from high-speed motorcycle crashes when a motorcyclist isn't wearing a helmet and in car accidents when the vehicle rolls over and the passenger is ejected.

Worrell said there was no way Hirst could have died from a three-foot fall.

"I argued in closings and asked Dr. Worrell if it was conceivable she (Hirst) could have done this by falling," Denue said. "Based on her (Worrell's) comments and more specifically that jurors were questioning me after the trial as to whether it was possible, I feel I need to investigate further."

The issue of whether it was possible for Hirst to have died from the fall was one of two issues that juror Randal Davis cited as his reasons for conducting the home experiment that caused Walker's mistrial.