Eusebio Fierros, Jr.
RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Death penalty case on hold
A Riverside County death penalty case has been put on hold after the judge branded a lawyer for the public defender’s office as ineffective and said there was "the very real appearance" that defense investigators may have tried to induce perjury.
The office has appealed. The deputy public defender removed from the case, R. Addison Steele II, disputes Judge Christian F. Thierbach’s ruling.
Perris residents Juan Ramon Coronado, Jr., 25, and Eusebio Fierros, 22, were both charged in the 2008 robbery and murder of 85-year-old Lupe Delgadillo from the community of Good Hope, a rural area west of Perris.
Fierros has been convicted, and jurors on Wednesday recommended the death penalty. He will be sentenced May 18.
Coronado’s case was severed from Fierros’ trial by Thierbach’s ruling.
The judge acted after reviewing two defense memos, made three years apart and filed with Steele by different investigators who interviewed the same acquaintance of the defendants.
But the contents of the memos differ significantly from each other, and that’s what got the attention of the court and prosecutors in the case.
One from 2008 said Coronado confessed his role in the murder to the friend; the second, from 2011, suggested Coronado seemed surprised to learn about the murder from a newspaper story. And there was a suggestion in the earlier memo that it could be written "minus" the murder confession.
Steele insists that was "a joke," and that the second memo that implied Coronado was ignorant of the slaying until reading about it was not the result of collusion between the investigators.
A December hearing in Thierbach’s court about the memos included an appearance by Public Defender Gary Windom, whom Thierbach told, "If I were you, I would be conducting a major housecleaning of your office, including the people responsible for this conduct."
Windom said Thursday the investigation was under way.
"This is the first such allegation since I have been public defender in Riverside County (since 1999)," Windom said. "The investigation is being taken very seriously." He said no interim action has been taken.
Court papers filed by the defender’s office call the perjury implications a "quantum leap" from the facts. It noted that each investigator worked for separate defense offices — one for the public defender, and one for the capital defender, the latter dedicated to death penalty cases.
"The picture from the court’s erroneous view was that of two investigators working for the Public Defender, each generating a divergent report in some sort of sinister plot," the papers state.
Steele said separately that material covered by attorney-client privilege prevented him from arguing effectively about the memos and other matters in open court, and Thierbach should not have denied him a private, under-oath hearing before removing him and the office from the case.
JUDGE NOTIFIES BAR
Thierbach sent the State Bar of California a letter notifying the attorney regulatory body of his ruling and Steele’s role in the matter. Steele said he has received an inquiry from the Bar.
"I am looking forward to talking to them, because they will take the few minutes needed to find out what actually happened," Steele said Thursday.
DETAILS OF MEMOS
The memos from 2008 and 2011 are each based on an interview with Marquan Lee, a friend of Coronado’s since around 2002. Both investigators on Thursday declined to comment, but one expressed confidence no wrongdoing will be found.
The 2008 memo says Coronado described to Lee his role and that of Fierros in the murder; that Lee saw Coronado with a gun similar to the suspected murder weapon; and that Coronado told Lee he and Fierros "put a ‘lick’ on an old man and took his car."
The 2011 report says Lee related that Coronado seemed "surprised" when a story about the murder and Fierros’ arrest appeared in a newspaper. Coronado was arrested a day later.
There also are comments in the 2008 memo that Thierbach and prosecutors said posed serious ethical questions: The defense investigator wrote that he told Lee how Coronado’s defense team wanted to put the gun in Fierros’ hands, instead of Coronado’s. And the investigator also wrote to Steele, "Let me know if you want an ‘interview’ report and I’ll get you one, minus the confession."
Prosecutors learned the content of the 2008 report because Steele accidentally sent it to them, along with the 2011 report. He tried to get it returned "and for the People to forget they had ever seen it," prosecutors told Thierbach.
Defense attorneys do not have to give prosecutors all the material they have gathered.
But it was too late. Prosecutors had seen it, and notified Thierbach about their concerns.
Even assuming that the interview report in which Coronado allegedly confessed was accidentally handed to prosecutors, Thierbach ruled "the ultimate result is that Mr. Coronado has been denied the effective assistance of counsel."
Turning to the memos, Thierbach said, "Even more telling is the very real appearance that investigators employed by the Public Defender’s Office have engaged in conduct suggesting a willingness to fabricate or alter evidence up to, and including, the subornation of perjury, in an effort to mount a defense."
NOT IN COLLUSION
Steele said Thierbach’s conclusions about the memos were unsupported. The two investigators, he said, "absolutely were not" in collusion, and each had coincidentally sought out Lee.
"Those two documents don’t have anything to do with each other, they are completely separate," he said. And, he noted, there was no document "minus the confession" produced from the content of the 2008 memo.
"My investigators should not be making those kinds of jokes, but at the same time, that’s what it was," Steele said. He also said the line about the defense strategy was ambiguous as to whether it was actually said to Lee, or mentioned by the investigator in the memo solely as a talking point to Steele.
The district attorney’s office declined a request for interviews in the case, but said through spokesman John Hall, "We support the court’s decision to remove previous counsel … and as prosecutors we seek to ensure justice is done and that a defendant is fully afforded his right to adequate counsel and a fair trial."
Steele said while he cannot disclose all the exonerating material he claims to have because of attorney-client privilege, "The district attorney has information in their hands that should let them know that what they are implying is absolutely incorrect."
Steele says the action is the latest exchange he has had with prosecutors over trial misconduct; in a previous murder case it was Steele who accused prosecutors of improper behavior for allegedly making inquiries about jury deliberations.
An appellate court has upheld Thierbach’s ruling to remove the public defender’s office from the case, and the state Supreme Court has been asked to hear the matter. The high court has put Coronado’s case on hold while the petition is considered.
"I hate being placed in this position," Thierbach said from the bench in December. "But I have an overriding, overwhelming obligation to do anything and everything in my power to ensure that these defendants receive a fair trial."
http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-n...se-on-hold.ece
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