Attorney: Parole promise broken in murder case

Molly Ball

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005 | 8:06 a.m.

A Las Vegas man who as a teenager killed his abusive father is still in prison more than five years later, despite a promise that he would serve no more than four years, according to his lawyer.

Conan Pope, now 21, faces another parole hearing on Wednesday. He was denied parole last year.

Pope was charged with first-degree murder for shooting his father in January 2000. He accepted a plea bargain that reduced the charge to voluntary manslaughter with the use of a deadly weapon, carrying a sentence of four to 15 years.

Pope's lawyer, Kristina Wildeveld, claims prosecutors promised as part of the deal that Pope would be released after four years. Prosecutors deny this, noting that only the state Parole Board can make that decision.

"It's a shame all around that he ever spent a day in prison," Wildeveld said of Pope, who was 15 when he killed his father.

Five years ago, Wildeveld, a former deputy special public defender who is now a private attorney, maintained throughout more than a year of hearings and negotiations that Pope's actions were justifiable and constituted self-defense. But prosecutors said they had enough evidence to prove premeditated, first-degree murder.

Wildeveld said Pope killed his father, 62-year-old Frank Pope, when he had no other recourse after years of abuse.

Metro Police and Child Protective Services had been called to the Pope residence to investigate allegations that Conan and his older sister were abused, but neither agency took action.

Frank Pope was by all accounts a violent man. He killed a German civilian while in the military in the 1950s; spent four years in prison for smothering his 1-year-old daughter and burying her in the woods in 1962; allegedly confessed to killing another infant daughter whose death had been ruled sudden infant death syndrome; and was arrested, but never tried, in the robbery and slaying of a woman in 1972. Several relatives and friends said Frank Pope had threatened to kill them over the years.

The prosecutor in the case, Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Laurent, said the father's cruelty was the reason the son got such a lenient sentence, but he said the crime itself was still premeditated murder.

"(Frank Pope) was a bad guy -- not a savory character," Laurent said. "We're not heartless. So we pled it (the charge) down, but it was still first-degree murder."

Laurent said Pope couldn't claim self-defense because he wasn't directly provoked. In the prosecution's version of events, Pope burst out of his room with a rifle after a fight with his father over dirty dishes.

The defense claimed the father was walking menacingly toward Pope's sister's room with a broom when Pope shot him. But Wildeveld also said the years of abuse -- physical, emotional and sexual -- that the children endured led to a pathological condition similar to the one battered wives experience.

"Any adult with all their capacities would have shot this guy, and they would have done it a long time before he (Pope) did it," Wildeveld said.

Laurent said the prosecution promised not to try to influence the Parole Board's decision by writing letters either for or against Pope's release, and Laurent said he has kept that promise.

Pope's parole was denied in May 2004, Parole Board Management Analyst David Smith said. The board -- a seven-member panel appointed by the governor -- considers many factors, such as prison behavior, but doesn't give reasons for its decisions, Smith said.

Today, Conan Pope is a broken young man, Wildeveld said.

"He would seem like a hardened person to some," she said. "I don't think the best way for Conan to work through his guilt was in prison. I think the best way was in therapy."

Molly Ball can be reached at 259-8814 or at molly@lasvegassun.com.