Judge sets stage for Gilbert showdown

By Jeff German

Friday, Jan. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

A judge’s refusal Thursday to toss out theft charges against a College of Southern Nevada construction manager set the stage for a broader courtroom showdown between the prosecution and the chief defendant in the theft case, the college’s associate vice president of management and facilities, William “Bob” Gilbert.

During a hearing, District Judge Donald Mosley raised some concerns about the way the attorney general’s office put the case together against the construction manager, Thad Skinner. But Mosley did not find enough reason to dismiss the charges, which accuse Skinner of helping Gilbert steal materials and equipment from the college to build Gilbert’s upscale home at Mount Charleston.

Not hashed out during the hearing, however, was the contention of Gilbert’s lawyer that investigators with the attorney general’s office tainted the entire criminal investigation by taking more than 200 photographs at Gilbert’s Mount Charleston estate out of his presence and without a court-approved warrant. The photos of materials and equipment were taken three months before investigators returned to the property with search warrants to seize evidence in a yearlong investigation prompted by a Sun story.

The attorney general’s office contends the photos were taken in plain view and not by any unlawful means.

But attorney John Momot, who intends to press the issue at a March 4 hearing, alleges the photos “poisoned the well,” producing a biased result.

In court papers, Momot argued that investigators wandered Gilbert’s 4.26-acre Mount Charleston property on March 30, 2007, taking the photos while he was working at the college. Then, he added, they relied on the photos to obtain the June 13, 2007, search warrants, and ultimately showed the photos to witnesses testifying before the grand jury that indicted Gilbert, Skinner and two other CSN employees under Gilbert last September.

“To allow the grand jury to receive and deliberate on such evidence undermines the integrity of the grand jury proceedings as a whole and violates (Gilbert’s) procedural due process rights,” Momot argued.

Investigators went to Gilbert’s ranch following a March 26, 2007, Sun report on allegations that Gilbert was using college materials and equipment to build his estate, which has a 8,200-square-foot main house, a 2,500-square-foot guesthouse, stables and a lighted basketball court. At the time of Gilbert’s indictment, the Clark County assessor listed the taxable value of the estate at $1.32 million.

In an affidavit, Anthony Ruggiero, an investigator with the attorney general’s office, said he and another investigator had gone to the property two times to speak to Gilbert about the allegations in the Sun story, but both times he wasn’t home.

On both visits, Ruggiero said, the investigators drove through an open construction gate to get to Gilbert’s house at the end of the property and, along the way, saw various materials and equipment. On the second visit, they decided to take photos.

Among the items photographed on the property were pallets of cinder block, lumber, packaged mortar and heavy machinery. Skinner has been accused of picking up the college-ordered materials from a Home Depot near the West Charleston CSN campus and taking them to Gilbert’s home. Some of the items investigators captured on film had Home Depot sales markings.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Conrad Hafen, who is prosecuting the case, has not yet responded in writing to Momot’s allegations, but in an interview Thursday he contended his investigators were on sound legal footing when they took the photos.

“I’m confident that, under the law, the investigators did not violate Gilbert’s Fourth Amendment rights,” Hafen said.

Hafen also said the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that such claims by Momot can’t be made this early in a criminal case. The claims, Hafen said, are better suited in a pretrial motion seeking to suppress evidence.

But in his court papers, Momot brought up other alleged improprieties, which combined with the taking of the photos, he said, allowed the indicting grand jury to be “misled from beginning to end.”

Momot argued that Hafen presented evidence to the grand jury that inflamed the investigative process and failed to present evidence, as required under the law, that would have benefitted Gilbert and the other defendants.

At Thursday’s hearing in front of Mosley, Skinner’s lawyer, Dustin Marcello, accused Hafen of misleading the grand jury on its first day of hearing evidence. In an effort to make the case appear bigger than it was, Marcello said, Hafen told panel members that he also would be seeking to charge the owners of WGDL, a Las Vegas construction company that did work for Gilbert and CSN. It had been alleged that the company billed the college for work that was done at Gilbert’s ranch.

WGDL officials, however, were not charged, Marcello said.

Hafen told Mosley that, by the second day of testimony the following week, a key witness against WGDL was unavailable to testify and that investigators had obtained new information showing the company may not have known its employees were working on Gilbert’s property. As a result, Hafen said, he told the grand jury that he no longer would be asking them to indict the company’s owners.

Mosley expressed some concern that the original efforts to charge the WGDL officials might have inflamed the grand jury, but in the end he decided against dismissing the charges against Skinner.

Afterward, Hafen said the investigation involving WGDL and other companies who dealt with Gilbert and CSN is still open. He would not name the other companies.

Hafen has not been back to the grand jury in this case since Gilbert and his subordinates were indicted.