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Kirstin
Lobato | Tabish/Murphy
| Rafay/Burns
| Las Vegas Prosecutors
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Robert Miranda
and Howard Haupt
- Former inmate's lawsuit
settled for $5 million
- Man accused of murder
spent 14 years on death row
By Jace
Radke, LAS VEGAS SUN, June 30, 2004
A man who spent 14 years on
Nevada's death row for a crime he said he didn't commit settled
a federal lawsuit against Clark County for $5 million, ending
a claim that alleged he was not adequately represented by the
Clark County public defender's office.
Represented by an attorney
who had passed the state bar only months before, Roberto Miranda
was convicted of killing a man and sentenced to death in 1982.
On appeal, a judge ordered a new trial because of errors in his
defense, and Miranda was released in September 1996 after prosecutors
decided not to pursue the case.
Miranda claimed his attorney
failed to adequately defend him and said he didn't find a witness
who could have cleared him of the crime.
JoNell Thomas, one of Miranda's
attorneys, said she hopes this case brings more attention to
the needs of the public defender's office, especially when it
comes to the defense of those facing the death penalty.
"This sends a clear message
to the Clark County commissioners about how important it is to
allocate money to the public defender's office," Thomas
said of the settlement that was followed by U.S. District Judge
Larry Hicks' dismissal of the case. "If you don't spend
the resources on the front end to provide experienced attorneys,
investigators and researchers you will pay on the back end, and
you'll pay a lot more."
His 1998 federal lawsuit against
the county named former Public Defender Morgan Harris, Deputy
Public Defender Thomas Rigsby and two former Metro Police homicide
detectives.
The case was initially thrown
out by a federal judge and a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals before another appellate panel allowed Miranda to
sue the county and Harris.
The settlement will be paid
by Compass Insurance, the successor to the company that insured
the county during Miranda's trial in 1982, said Walt Cannon,
who represented the former Metro detectives in the case.
Mary Miller, the county's attorney,
said that the county paid its insurance premiums in 1982 and
that the settlement will not cost county taxpayers any money.
The county is now self-insured, Miller said.
An undisclosed amount of attorney
fees will be paid by Miranda from the settlement money, Thomas
said.
Miranda, who was convicted
of the stabbing death of Manuel Rodriguez Torres, insisted that
a key prosecution witness had a reason to frame him, but Rigsby
failed to locate witnesses that would help prove his case.
Miranda's appellate attorney
located the witnesses and convinced a judge to grant him a new
trial.
According to the lawsuit, the
public defender's office "threw in the towel while Miranda
sped toward his execution."
Over the last year the county
has added 10 new positions to the public defender's office to
bring the number of attorneys in the office to 80, but unless
more is done others will fall through the cracks like Miranda
did, said Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Nevada.
"I commend the county
for the steps they have taken, but not enough has been done,"
Peck said. "There is at least one department in the public
defender's office where attorneys are carrying caseloads of 500
or more cases making it impossible for them to provide any meaningful
representation.
"As long as this problem
exists the county is going to be exposed to more lawsuits, settlements
and judgments."
Clark County Public Defender
Phil Kohn said that it's no secret that his office is understaffed
and underfunded, with his attorneys carrying about 350 cases
apiece every year.
"We have got some new
bodies, but the main point is that the county has recognized
the problem and made us and social services the priority,"
said Kohn, who added that he would like to see that number drop
to about 250 a year.
Kohn said he recognizes that
the juvenile division is still buried under about 500 case per
year per attorney, but added that the division has grown from
two attorneys to 10 over the past two years.
Kohn said the office has made
some other changes including establishing murder teams that draw
on the office's most experienced attorneys for death penalty
cases.
"We don't put rookies
on death penalty cases," Kohn said. "The murder teams
insure that the horror that Roberto Miranda lived through won't
ever happen again."
Another change is that there
are now team chiefs who don't have caseloads and can better supervise
the office's attorneys, Kohn said.
A 2003 report commissioned
by the public defender's office and prepared by the National
Legal Aid and Defender Association, showed glaring problems with
the growing caseloads handled by Clark County public defenders.
For example:
The report notes that from
1983 to 2001 the number of new juvenile case assignments grew
by nearly 400 percent, from 576 to 2,867, without one new attorney
being added.
The office should have a new
appellate unit meeting the association's standards.
The public defender's office
needs new personnel to create and enforce clear performance guidelines
and expectations and provide training.
Peck echoed Thomas' comments
that the settlement should be a message to the county commission.
"During the last budget
cycle a number of political and policy decisions were made,"
Peck said. "Money was poured into different agencies and
some steps were taken in the public defender's office, but if
more isn't done we're going to continue to see the county gambling
with tax payer money."
Metro settles civil rights
case for $800,000
By Rachael Levy, LAS VEGAS
SUN, February 04, 1997
Metro Police must pay a San
Diego man about $800,000 to not pursue a $1 million judgment
he won, then lost, after being acquitted in a Las Vegas murder
case, a source said.
Howard Haupt sued after his
civil rights were allegedly violated by a Metro homicide detective
during his criminal trial. Haupt is expected to receive about
$300,000, with the remaining $500,000 to pay his legal bills,
the source said Monday.
Haupt's lawsuit alleged that
retired Detective Tom Dillard was malicious in efforts to convict
him in the 1987 slaying of 7-year-old Alexander Harris of Mountain
View, Calif.
The boy disappeared from Whiskey
Pete's casino on the California-Nevada border Nov. 27, 1987.
His body was found under a nearby trailer a month later.
Haupt, who was staying at Whiskey
Pete's at the time of the boy's disappearance, was found innocent
in 1989.
A Las Vegas federal jury originally
awarded Haupt $1 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive
damages. But U.S. District Judge Philip Pro overturned the $1
million award because he believed it excessive and ordered a
new trial.
Metro and Haupt's attorneys
agreed to settle rather than take the case before a second jury.
The breakdown was calculated
through a formula based on legal fees. Metro and Haupt's attorneys
agreed to let a federal judge decide the amount of those fees.
On Monday, Pro ordered Metro
to pay about $500,000 in attorney fees. Haupt's attorneys said
they spent more than $750,000 in pursuing the case. Police attorneys
could not be reached for comment.
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
