Woman pleads not guilty in fatal shooting of cabdriver

By Dave Toplikar

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 | 11:10 a.m.

It will be more than a year before Autumn Dawn Murry will go to trial on murder charges for the March 4 death of Tesfaye Arze, a 30-year-old North Las Vegas cabdriver.

Judge Stefany Miley set the date for the jury trial for April 2, 2012, in Clark County District Court.

Murry, a 21-year-old former U.S. Army police officer, is being held without bail in the Clark County Detention Center on counts of burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon, murder with use of a deadly weapon and two counts of robbery with use of a deadly weapon.

Arze was found dead from a gunshot to the head lying on the street outside his cab on March 4 on High Sierra Avenue in the northeast valley.

On March 11, Metro Police arrested Murry, one of two women believed to be shown in surveillance video from the cab prior to the shooting. Police still are searching for Felicia Mosely, 18, as a person of interest in the case.

Murry is also accused of robbing a Mini Mart at 4563 E. Russell Road shortly before 2:30 a.m., about an hour before Arze was shot.

During her arraignment Wednesday morning, about a dozen of Arze's family members, many from Ethiopia, were on hand to watch the proceeding. Murry was brought in with other prisoners and stood in the rear of the courtroom.

Her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Norman Reed, told the judge she waived the reading of the charges, pleaded not guilty and also waived her right to a speedy trial.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Pam Weckerly told the judge that prosecutors were interested in setting a trial date for mid-April 2012.

However, Reed told the judge that date wouldn't work for his schedule.

Reed told the judge that the trial date was being set without him having a transcript of the proceedings of a grand jury that indicted Murry last week and other information he would need to prepare her defense.

"So it's very difficult to tell the court, even in six months, that we could be ready for this case," Reed said.

He said it was also unclear whether the district attorney's office would decide to pursue the death penalty in the case, which would also factor into preparing Murry's defense.

Weckerly said an April 2, 2012, trial date would work for her. So the trial was set for that date, with a calendar call, a court hearing to make sure attorneys are ready for trial, set for 9:30 a.m. March 28, 2012.

Reed asked the judge if he could have 30 days to file a writ of habeus corpus. Weckerly had no objection, so he was given until April 27 to file that motion.

Outside the court, Reed said it wasn't unusual for a murder trial to be delayed for more than a year, especially when he didn't know whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty. He thought that decision would be made within the next week.

"There's an aggravating circumstance, obviously, the robbery preceded the shooting of the cabdriver. So this is potentially a capital case. So you've got to tread carefully. That's what I told the judge," Reed said.

Reed said he didn't know yet if prosecutors would roll the prior robbery charge into the murder charges so the two cases would be tried together.

"I don't have all the facts yet," he said. "Arguably, they are part of the same transaction. Typically, if the offenses are alleged to occur in the same day, with the same defendant, they're normally kept together. But there's a lot of gray area as to whether those are separate or not."

If the district attorney's office does pursue the death penalty, a second attorney qualified at handling a death penalty defense would have to be appointed, he said.