Homeless in Arizona

Will Johnathan Doody get a fair trial this time???

They were arrested after a patient in a Tucson mental institution, Mike McGraw, called them and said he know who committed the worst murders in the history of the Valley of the Sun. That's not a typo on my part. I said that after some nut job in a Tucson mental hospital called the cops in Phoenix to say he know who committed the worst mass murder in the history of Phoeenix, they used that tip to arrest the Tucson Four and coerce confessions out of them.

About a year later the Tuscon Four were released from Maricopa County jail when it was discovered that Johnathan Doody and Alessandro Garcia had the rifle used to commit the murders. The Tucson Four later sued Maricopa County for false arrest and won.

And now Johnathan Doody is on trial again because the cops also coerced a confession out of him the first time around.

Will Johnathan Doody get a trial the second time around??? I doubt it.

Source

Opening statements in Arizona temple slayings trial

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com

Wed Aug 21, 2013 7:39 PM

The biggest mass murder in Arizona history took place because Johnathan Doody wanted a new car, a witness said in a tape played to the jury on the opening day of Doody’s retrial.

“It was just an idea that me and Johnathan Doody had come up with basically for money,” Alessandro ‘Alex’ Garcia, Doody’s former roommate and co-defendant, said in a recording made more than 20 years ago. “He was attempting to purchase a car.”

Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Jason Kalishplayed the tape during opening statements Wednesday in the case against Doody, who at 39 years old is being retried in the 1991 slayings of nine people in a Buddhist temple in the West Valley.

But defense attorney David Rothschild used his opening statement to portray Garcia as an unreliable witness who would have implicated the president of the United States if it meant he could avoid the death penalty.

“Alex (Garcia) made a deal that he would benefit from,” Rothschild said. “Most importantly and interestingly, there is not going to be any evidence to show that Johnathan Doody shot and killed anybody. ...There’s not even evidence that Johnathan Doody was at the temple — only the words of a 10-time killer.”

Garcia was sentenced to 271 years in prison after he pleaded guilty for the mass murder at Wat Pramkunaram temple. He’d also confessed to a 10th murder committed before he and Doody were arrested in 1991, Rothschild said.

In the tape, Garcia said that Doody began planning a robbery of the monks who lived, prayed and ate at the Wat Pramkunaram temple by grilling his brother, David Doody, a novice monk. He gathered information on such details as what time they locked up and how many stayed there at night.

On Aug. 9, 1991, Doody made a deal to buy a friend’s Ford Mustang in exchange for his Ford Escort and $2,000. Doody signed over the Escort but owed the money, Kalish said.

“The time was right,” Kalish said.

Late that night or early the next morning, Garcia and Doody held up six monks, a nun and two helpers at the Waddell temple, searched their rooms, and stole cameras, stereo equipment and cash, Kalish said.

The murders, according to Garcia, were Doody’s idea. The victims were ordered to lie face down with their hands on their heads, Garcia said on the tape.

“Johnathan went around shooting people in the back of the heads,” Garcia said.

In the two decades since Doody was sentenced to 281 years in prison, two courts threw out his conviction and ordered a new trial after finding that his confession was falsely made under coercion.

Attorneys for both sides in the retrial spent nearly two weeks selecting 10 men and six women for the jury. Video cameras were banned Wednesday after images of the jury was accidentally shown. Defense attorney Maria Schaffer requested a mistrial, but the judge denied the motion after polling the jury.

Prosecutors have physical evidence tying Doody and Garcia to the case but nothing like jurors might see on television shows, Kalish said. There were no DNA matches because Garcia and Doody covered their heads and hands, he said.

Since the 1993 trial, six witnesses have perished. One who survived, a woman who cooked for the monks, is expected to testify Thursday about finding the nine bodies in the Thai temple.

Valley Buddhist temple massacre has had lasting impact

Valley Buddhist temple massacre has had lasting impact

by William Hermann - Aug. 14, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

The slaying 20 years ago of nine people at a West Valley Buddhist temple, while tragic in its own right, also changed the face of Arizona politics and still shines a light on the issue of police interrogation techniques.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may well owe his first election victory, in 1992, to then-Sheriff Tom Agnos' staff bungling the investigation into the Aug. 9, 1991, murders at the Wat Promkunaram Temple. Arpaio has become a key figure in Arizona politics, using his influence to get others elected and playing a key role in making illegal immigration a state and national issue.

The legacy of the murders also lives on in Arizona police agencies, where detectives interrogating suspects strive not to make the mistakes sheriff's investigators made 20 years ago.

Early on, detectives threatened, pressured and coerced four innocent men into false confessions, then used the same tactics with two other suspects. The result: A guilty man who confessed and went to prison may yet go free.

The monks who live, pray and teach at Wat Promkunaram, meanwhile, will hold a prayer service Aug. 27 for the six Buddhist monks, a nun and two acolytes who were brutally murdered at the temple in the community of Waddell on that night 20 years ago.

A frenzied scene

Russell Kimball, then-homicide chief for the Sheriff's Office, remembers the frenzy at the crime scene.

"It was like an armed camp out there - everybody who was anybody in law enforcement wanted a part of it," he said. "The media was everywhere; it couldn't have been a higher-profile case."

Investigators found nine victims lying face down and grouped together, their heads pointing inward like spokes in a wheel. Some had their hands clasped in prayer. The carpet was bloody from head wounds made by .22-caliber bullets and shotgun blasts to torsos, arms and legs.

Sheriff's detectives over six days did exhaustive crime-scene work, taking thousands of photographs and fingerprints and making scores of diagrams.

"We collected every shell casing, took down walls and took the carpet out," Kimball said. "We also set up a multiagency task force. We soon had 221 people from 21 agencies on the case, and all done under constant pressure."

Despite an exhaustive investigation, weeks went by without a solid lead. Then, one month after the killings came what seemed like the big break. Tucson mental-hospital patient Mike McGraw, 24, on Sept. 10, 1991, called sheriff's investigators. He said he knew who had done it and he named names.

Soon, Tucson police had picked up McGraw and several friends: Leo Bruce, then 28, Mark Nunez, 19, Dante Parker, 20, and Victor Zarate, 28. All were taken to Phoenix and grilled from 9 p.m. to dawn daily, from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13.

Kimball said the investigators pleaded, cajoled, threatened and lied.

"It was so frenetic, 'You do this and I do that,' and we used tag-team tactics," he said. "Worse, we had people who'd never done murder interrogations, or even major crimes, before working those guys."

Among the mistakes made by interrogators, Kimball said, was, "they fed information about the case to them, and a trained homicide investigator would not do that."

The suspects' resistance only added pressure.

"We hammered on those guys until we broke their will, it was as simple and bad as that," he said. "After a while they were willing to say anything." The defendants buckle

Beaten down and exhausted, four of the defendants began to tell the detectives what they believed they wanted to hear, and because they'd been given information about the murders, they gave details that seemed damning.

"Obviously they talked - because of the pressure," Kimball said. "A suspect has been up for hours and everything starts breaking down. The suspect gets to a place where they just submit, say anything the detectives want, just to stop the pressure."

One man didn't break. Zarate maintained his innocence and was released.

Then-County Attorney Rick Romley charged McGraw, Bruce, Parker and Nunez with nine counts each of first-degree murder.

But once the "Tucson Four" had a few days to rest and think about what had happened to them, they recanted, saying they were coerced. But investigators were certain the crime was solved.

Then, on Oct. 23, they got a fateful phone call.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab had identified the murder weapon: a .22-caliber rifle that didn't belong to any of the Tucson men. It belonged to a boy named Rolando Caratachea Jr., then 16.

The rifle had been found Aug. 21 when Caratachea and his friend, Johnathan Doody, 17, were stopped by Luke Air Force Base police. Task-force investigators had learned about the stop, picked up the rifle on Sept. 10 and talked with Doody, who said that he and friend Alessandro Garcia, 16, had fired it several times together. All three young men lived in the West Valley.

But that line of investigation stopped, because Sept. 10 was the day Mike McGraw made his call from Tucson. The rifle sat in a detective's office for weeks before being tested. A new theory

Once investigators learned it was one of the murder weapons, Caratachea, Doody and Garcia were picked up for questioning. They were put in adjoining interrogation rooms. Detectives went to work on them, sure they were part of a murder crew involving the Tucson men.

Valley lawyer and author Gary L. Stuart, who long has been absorbed by the case, said that when he began to write about it he planned to concentrate on how improper interrogation techniques can elicit false confessions.

"In my first two years of research that's what I focused on," he said. "Then I realized the story was at least as much about coercing true confessions as coercing false confessions."

Stuart points out in his 2010 book "Innocent Until Interrogated" that "when the detectives who had questioned the Tucson Four got their hands on Doody, Caratachea and Garcia, they used their old playbook."

Garcia succumbed to interrogators, who told him he could escape execution if he gave them Doody. Garcia admitted being at the temple that night and said Doody shot the monks with the .22, while he blasted them with a shotgun.

The heat was turned up on Doody.

"Doody was subjected to intense interrogation by the same group of officers, using the same techniques that they had earlier successfully used to break down the Tucson Four," Stuart said.

"Doody was arrested at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, put in a holding cell until midnight and then they started the interrogation," Stuart said. "It went all night, and by 6 a.m. the next morning he is starting to be incoherent - you can hear it on the tape. He is crying and petrified, he has two adults playing the 'good cop, bad cop' routine. He was in there almost 13 hours."

Different suspect, same tactics

Kimball says now, "It was the same old thing."

"You have (the interrogating detective) begging Johnathan to tell you the truth, and you could feel him not wanting to surrender," Kimball said. "But he finally did surrender; was broken."

Doody admitted he'd gone to the temple that night with Garcia. He didn't admit to shooting anyone. Still, what he said was enough to eventually convict him - and to convince Romley that the Tucson Four case "was just all wrong."

"I had questions about the Tucson men even before Doody and Garcia's interrogations," Romley said. "I began to review the materials, and inconsistencies started popping up. It just didn't hold together. I talked to Tom Agnos and said I was dismissing the charges against the Tucson Four. It was a difficult conversation."

The Tucson Four were released Nov. 22, 1991. All but McGraw sued the county. In 1994, Leo Bruce and Mark Nunez got $1.1 million each. Dante Parker got $240,000.

Doody and Garcia were tried in 1993. Doody did not testify. His statement that he was at the temple the night of the killings, and Garcia's testimony that he and Doody carried out the killings, were enough to convict them of nine counts of first-degree murder.

On Feb. 11, 1994, Doody was sentenced to 281 years in prison. On July 15, 1994, Garcia got 271 years. For Garcia, who had readily confessed, appeals of the sentence seemed useless.

Not so for Doody.

The case had drawn national attention. Doody's treatment at the hands of interrogators brought Alan Dershowitz, a nationally known attorney, to his side.

In 1995, Dershowitz, working with lawyer Peter Balkan in Phoenix, argued to the Arizona Court of Appeals that Doody was wrongfully deprived of his father's presence during the interrogation. He also argued that the Miranda warning against self-incrimination was improperly administered and that Doody's confession was not voluntary.

There began the appeals that continue to this day, though now near resolution.

Legal challenges ongoing

In May, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Doody's confession, elicited over 12 hours of questioning, was illegally coerced. On Aug. 1, the Arizona Attorney General's Office petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that decision. If the Supreme Court refuses, Doody must be retried or go free.

Stuart said Doody's confession never should have stood up in court.

"What the law requires is a standard of admissibility and evidence for a confession, and the test of admissibility is whether it was freely and voluntarily given by the defendant," Stuart said. "The standard is whether the defendant's will was overborne by the interrogator. Was he coerced into confessing?

"They coerced the Tucson Four, who were innocent, but in much the same way they coerced Doody, who is guilty," Stuart said. "It was coercion all the same, and that should make it inadmissible in court."

Stuart said the appellate ruling clarified "that the danger to society and constitutional mandates are every bit as important in true confessions as they are in false confessions."

If there is a broader legal legacy of the investigation, it is this: Detectives at Valley police agencies are now more mindful of their interrogation techniques.

Interestingly, the murders are not at all a searing topic at the temple where they all took place.

The day after the slayings, Buddhist monk Phrakru Widesbrommakun was called to Phoenix from a Los Angeles temple. He has been in Waddell ever since, now serving as abbot.

"I knew the people who were killed, and we still feel very sad here about it, of course," the monk said recently as he sat in the temple's dining hall. "But we do not have hatred about it. In that respect, we have forgotten what happened and cannot concern ourselves with it.

"We are about peace."

Prosecutor won't drop questionable confession

Currently there are two trials going on because the Maricopa County Attorney's office didn't give the people a fair trial in the first place.

The first trial is for Johnathan Doody who is accused of the Buddhist Temple murders which happened 20 years ago in the Phoenix area. The first time around the cops violated his 5th Amendment rights and forced a confession out of him. (see this link)

The second trial is that of Debra Milke. She is also getting a second trial because again the cops seem to have framed her the first time around and made up an imaginary confession from her. Her case is also 20 years old.

If I had my way I would throw out both cases because the cops framed both people and don't deserve a second chance to commit perjury and frame them both again.

Personally I suspect neither of these trials has anything to do with getting justice. I suspect they are both aimed at proving the county attorney is "tough on crime" so he can get reelected.

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Prosecutor in Debra Milke case won't drop questionable confession

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:35 PM

Debra Milke’s 1990 murder conviction and death sentence were thrown out by a federal court of appeals because of a questionable confession purportedly obtained by a Phoenix police detective with a spotty record.

But a Maricopa County prosecutor made it clear in a Superior Court hearing Friday that he intends to debate the higher-court ruling and keep the tainted confession in evidence — despite the misgivings of the Superior Court judge overseeing Milke’s retrial in the slaying of her 4-year-old son.

The clock is ticking.

The confession was supposed to be argued next Friday; Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz doubted it will get done by then, especially given that Deputy County Attorney Vince Imbordino asked for more time to prepare his arguments on the confession.

According to an order by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Milke’s retrial is supposed to start by Oct.7 or she must be released from custody. The trial will go forward.

Milke's conviction hinged on a detective named Armando Saldate, who claimed that Milke confessed the murder to him, though it was not recorded and there were no witnesses. Milke denies that she confessed.

In May, the 9th Circuit threw out her conviction and death sentence because her defense in the original trial had been denied the chance to obtain Saldate’s sullied personnel record and question him about it.

Milke’s attorneys want the confession excluded altogether.

But Imbordino told Mroz, “There are things in the 9th Circuit ruling that are false.”

Mroz has said that the opinion will be the law of the case.

“You don’t have to accept a 9th Circuit ruling if they are wrong,” Imbordino said.

There is to be a separate hearing on Friday dealing with whether Milke can be released on bond.

The trial is currently scheduled to begin Sept.30.

Friday’s hearing mostly centered on Milke’s defense attorneys’ contention that the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office should be disqualified from retrying Milke because of its actions during the 1990 trial, when it blocked Milke’s attorneys from accessing Saldate’s personnel record, which mentions eight cases in which he was caught lying or violating suspects’ rights.

Mroz took the matter under advisement and said she would issue a decision next week.

Milke, 49, is charged with first-degree murder in the 1989 death of her son, Christopher; she is accused of having arranged the killing. She spent 22 years on death row before the 9th Circuit decision in May.

Two men are still on death row because of the crime.

James Styers, who was Milke's roommate, is believed to have been the triggerman who shot the boy and left his body in a desert wash in December 1989. The boy thought he was going to see Santa Claus.

The third person convicted in the murder, Roger Scott, confessed that he was with Styers when Christopher was killed, and Scott led police to the boy’s body. Scott also implicated Milke, but he refused to testify at her trial.

The prosecutor from Milke’s first trial and the elected county attorney at the time of her conviction have both retired. But in their briefs, Milke’s attorneys claimed that the new prosecutor and his supervisors worked closely with them and could therefore be unjustly biased against Milke. They asked that the entire office be disqualified, which would require that the case be tried by attorneys from another county or by the state.

At the end of Friday’s hearing, Milke’s ex-husband, who changed his first name from Mark to Arizona, tried to give a packet of papers to Mroz, saying he has been harassed by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which prosecuted the Milke case through years of appeals. Arizona Milke told Mroz that the Attorney General’s Office is responsible for his own father’s death because of the alleged harassment. And he expressed his own displeasure with the county attorney, though he has steadfastly lobbied for the punishment of his ex-wife for their son’s death.

Mroz told him it wasn’t the proper venue.

Alessandro “Alex” Garcia bribed to implicate Doody

Source

Admitted temple killer testifies on confession implicating Doody

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:37 PM

A confessed murderer told jurors in Johnathan Doody’s retrial Wednesday that, under pressure and after hours of grilling by investigators 22 years ago, he falsely implicated four Tucson men in 1991 in murders at a West Valley Buddhist temple.

Alessandro “Alex” Garcia, 38, said detectives didn’t believe him when he claimed that he and Doody acted alone in robbing and murdering nine people at the Waddell monastery in August 1991.

“I had told (them) everything,” Garcia testified. “They did not believe me. ... They were very adamant ... to get me to say that the individuals who would be known as the ‘Tucson Four’ were involved.”

Eventually, Garcia said, exhaustion from more than 10 hours of interrogation and pressure from his father and Maricopa County sheriff’s investigators wore him down.

“I said they (the Tuscon Four) were involved,” Garcia said. “They kept hounding me. I just started telling them whatever.”

The interrogation techniques described by Garcia are the basis of Doody’s retrial now under way in Maricopa County Superior Court. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in recent years threw out Doody’s conviction after determining that investigators used improper tactics during Doody’s interrogation to get him to confess to the slayings.

On the stand in Doody’s retrial for the second day, Garcia described how he and Doody made a quick getaway after fatally shooting the six monks, a nun and two acolytes.

Before going home, they stopped to strip off their fatigues and conceal two murder weapons in a Ford Mustang, Garcia testified.

The pair also went to Garcia’s house and emptied the car of more than $2,800 in cash and coins, cameras and other loot they had stolen, Garcia said, adding that they had to sneak it past his mother.

Under questioning from Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Jason Kalish, Garcia said that he and Doody couldn’t go to Doody’s home with the stolen loot because the family was “very attached to the temple. We had just murdered nine people” there.

Doody’s brother was a monk-in-training at the time of the murders.

Garcia pleaded guilty 20 years ago in a deal that spared him the death penalty if he told the truth about the murders, he said.

He was the key witness in the 1993 jury trial in which Doody was convicted.

Garcia said he had nothing to gain by testifying against Doody in 2013. Both Garcia and Doody have been incarcerated since their 1991 arrests.

Cross-examination of Garcia began Wednesday and will continue next week.

Milke was framed by Detective Armando Saldate

Milke case: Detective who claimed confession to plead 5th

Sadly this case is a lot like the case of NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella who is accused of framing up to 50 people for murder. Detective Louis Scarcella is accused of making up confessions out of thin air, just like Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate is accused of.

NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella is also accused of beating up people to get false confession. And like Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate Louis Scarcella is also accused of giving criminals drugs, special favors and light jail sentences to get them to make up lies he used to frame people for murder.

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Milke case: Detective who claimed confession to plead 5th

By Michael Kiefer The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:33 PM

An attorney representing Armando Saldate, the former Phoenix Police detective who claimed that accused child killer Debra Milke confessed to him nearly 24 years ago, has advised Saldate to take the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify.

Without Armando Saldate's testimony, it's doubtful that the confession could come in to Milke's retrial, effectively destroying the prosecution's case.

The alleged confession was at the bottom of Milke's murder conviction and death sentence being overturned in March by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Milke's 1990 conviction was based largely on a confession that Saldate said Milke made to him about taking part in planning the death of her four-year-old son, Christopher.

Milke denied ever making the confession and Saldate did not tape record it. During her original trial, Milke's defense attorney was not given access to Saldate's tawdry personnel record, detailing instances in which he had been caught lying and even trying to extort sex in exchange for not writing a traffic ticket. The 9th Circuit ruled that Milke be retried or released, and if she were retried, the confession could only come in if Saldate's record was admitted, too.

But the 9th Circuit opinion also put pressure on Saldate: the judges wrote that if Saldate admits to having lied in other cases, he would be discredited, and if he stuck to his original stories, he would risk committing perjury.

"What's in it for him?" Debus asked during a conversation today with The Arizona Republic.

Debus was appointed to represent Saldate in a hearing September 23 over whether the confession should be suppressed.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office wants to use the confession, and without it, may be hard pressed to continue the case. County Attorney Bill Montgomery has repeatedly criticized the 9th Circuit ruling for what he calls misrepresentations. [How dare those b*stards in the 9th Circuit Court throw out the case just because a crooked cop committed perjury]

Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz has said that the opinion will be the law of the case. Last week, Mroz granted bail to Milke over the objections of the County Attorney's Office.

There is a hearing on unspecified matters in the Milke case this afternoon at 3:30.

Judge may toss disputed Milke confession

Debra Milke was framed by Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate????

Of course the bottom line is that your chance of getting a fair trial is about as high as going to Las Vegas and winning a million dollars.

Sadly the criminal justice system, or criminal injustice system as the former Arizona ACLU Director Eleanor Eisenberg calls it is corrupt to the core.

The problem isn't unique to Debra Milke. In the retrial of the Buddhist temple murder case it also seems that Johnathan Doody, his buddy Alessandro ‘Alex’ Garcia, along with the Tucson four Mike McGraw, Leo Bruce, Mark Nunez, and Dante Parker were also framed by the Maricopa County Sheriff for murder.

The Tucson Four were released after it was discovered that their confessions had been forced. They all received big bucks from Maricopa County for false arrest.

I suspect that the Maricopa County Sheriff also violated the rights of Alessandro ‘Alex’ Garcia and got a false confession out of him. But that's not a court issue now.

And of course Johnathan Doody is currently having a second trial, just like Debra Milke because the police probably got a false confession out of him.

One other interesting case along these lines is in New York City and is about Detective Louis Scarcella of the New York Police Department. It is suspect that he has framed as many as 50 people doing the same thing that Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate did.

NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella is accused of making confessions up out of thin air. Beating up people to get confessions. Bribing criminals with drugs, special favors, and reduced sentences to make up lies to help him frame people for murder.

Source

Judge may toss disputed Milke confession

By Michael Kiefer and JJ Hensley The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:33 PM

The prospects of reconvicting child-murder defendant Debra Milke appeared to dim Thursday, when the detective who took her disputed confession signaled that he would not testify in Milke’s new trial out of a fear of incriminating himself.

Larry Debus, an attorney representing former Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate, said he advised his client to invoke the Fifth Amendment when he is called to testify in the trial.

Milke’s 1990 conviction was based largely on a confession that Saldate said Milke made to him about taking part in planning the death of her 4-year-old son, Christopher. If Saldate doesn’t testify this time, the confession will not be allowed into the re-trial, the judge said.

“I’ve given him advice, he has to decide to take it,” Debus said in a brief court hearing Thursday. He indicated his client will refuse to testify.

Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz said Saldate will need to tell her in a hearing set for Sept. 23 that he plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

And if Saldate refuses to testify, prosecutors will face a decision about how the case moves forward, Mroz said.

“Then, I believe the ball will be in the state’s hand again to see whether they want to proceed with the hearing,” she said. “All I can say is, at this point, the confession doesn’t come in without him testifying.”

Milke, 49, who was released on a $500,000 secured bond last week, has already spent 23 years on Arizona’s death row for the December 1989 murder of her son. The child was told he was going to see Santa Claus at the mall, but instead, Milke’s roommate and would-be suitor, James Styers, and his friend Roger Scott, took the boy to the desert and shot him in the head.

Styers and Scott are still on death row.

But Milke’s conviction and sentence were overturned in March by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case was sent back to Maricopa County Superior Court with orders to retry Milke or set her free.

Milke’s attorney, Michael Kimerer, said after the 20-minute hearing that he was pleased to hear about Saldate but continues to question the motives of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

“There’s really no case,” he said. “I’m wondering why they’re proceeding now.”

Mroz reaffirmed a hearing set for this month, at which time Saldate will need to appear and confirm for the judge that he intends to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination. The judge said that if she determines that Saldate does not have a right to assert his Fifth Amendment privilege and compels him to testify, the parties will then need to hold a hearing on the motion to suppress Milke’s confession.

Saldate’s decision will strongly influence how the case proceeds, Mroz said.

“If I don’t hear from (Saldate), the confession is out, and if the confession is out, the state needs to tell me if they want to proceed with trial,” she said. “There’s a lot of ifs right now.”

Milke denied ever making the confession, and Saldate did not tape-record it. During her original trial, Milke’s defense attorney was not given access to Saldate’s personnel record, detailing instances in which he had been caught lying and trying to extort sex in exchange for not writing a traffic ticket.

Deputy County Attorney Vince Imbordino said he plans to file a motion in the next few days that will detail the prosecution’s point of view on questions of Saldate’s truthfulness outlined in the ruling from the 9th Circuit that forced a retrial for Milke.

Without a thorough understanding of the cases the 9th Circuit cited in which Saldate was found to have lied or conducted illegal interrogations, Mroz cannot have a complete understanding of the detective’s attempt to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination, Imbordino said.

“With all due respect, I don’t see how you can be fully informed on (truthfulness) material and whether it would or wouldn’t present a concern on future criminal liability until you see what we have,” Imbordino told Mroz.

The 9th Circuit opinion also put pressure on Saldate; the judges wrote that if Saldate admits having lied in other cases, he will be discredited, and if he sticks to his original stories, he will risk committing perjury.

“What’s in it for him?” Debus asked during a conversation Thursday with The Arizona Republic.

Debus was appointed to represent Saldate over whether the confession should be suppressed.

The appellate court ruling also raised the possibility that Saldate could face federal charges. The panel asked the federal court clerk to forward a copy of the ruling to the U.S. Attorney’s Office “for possible investigation into whether Det. Saldate’s conduct, and that of his supervisors and other state and local officials, amounts to a pattern of violating the federally protected rights of Arizona residents.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona said Thursday that the office will not pursue charges against Saldate for the conduct outlined in the 9th Circuit’s opinion.

“This office conducted a preliminary review with regard to Mr. Saldate and, as a threshold matter, has concluded that any federal criminal prosecution would be barred by the applicable federal limitations periods,” said John Lopez, a spokesman for the office.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office wants to use the confession, and without it may be hard-pressed to continue the case. County Attorney Bill Montgomery has repeatedly criticized the 9th Circuit ruling for what he calls misrepresentations.

Mroz has said that the opinion will be the law of the case. Last week, Mroz granted bail to Milke over the objections of the County Attorney’s Office.

She declined during Thursday’s hearing to set a trial date.

Montgomery to Saldate - Please help us frame Debra Milke

In this article it sure sounds like Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is sending a message to crooked Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate saying he won't be charged with perjury if he helps Bill Montgomery frame Debra Milke for murder.

With prosecutors like Bill Montgomery and cops like Detective Armando Saldate it's almost guaranteed an innocent person won't get a fair trial.

I am not sure on this but I think according to the rules of the court Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is required to give Debra Milke any evidence that could help her prove her innocent. And that certainly would include evidence that Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate seems to be a lying scum back cop based on things he has done in the past.

An interesting case that is related to this is Brooklyn, New York where New York City Police Detective Louis Scarcella is suspected of framing around 50 people for murder. The similarities are amazing.

NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella is accused of making up imaginary confessions up out of thin air, just like Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate.

NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella is accused of giving criminal snitches drugs, money, reduced sentences and special favors in exchange for them making up imaginary evidence to convict people he was investigating of murder. Just like Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate.

And NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella is accused of beating people us to get confessions out of them. Just like Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate.

This case also has a lot of simularities to the Phoenix area Buddhist Temple murders in which four kids from Tucson were framed for the murders in the Buddhist Temple.

Source

Montgomery: Milke case detective being intimidated

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Sep 13, 2013 10:39 PM

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery delivered a message on Friday to the detective who allegedly received the disputed confession at the heart of the Debra Milke murder case: You have no reason to avoid testifying because you fear prosecution.

A lawyer for former Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate told a trial judge on Thursday that he had recommended Saldate take advantage of his constitutional protection against self-incrimination if he is called to the witness stand in Milke’s retrial, a move that would bar her alleged confession from being considered in the case.

The confession was crucial to her conviction in the 1989 shooting death of her 4-year-old son, Christopher, which left two men on death row and sent Milke there for 22 years until her release last week.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her conviction and death sentence earlier this year because the trial court refused to let her introduce evidence that could have discredited the confession. Prosecutors “remained unconstitutionally silent” about Saldate’s history of misconduct, including lying, the panel wrote.

And if Saldate doesn’t testify during Milke’s retrial, the confession will not be allowed into the retrial, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz said Thursday.

In pointed remarks aimed at Saldate, his attorney and lawyers representing Milke, Montgomery said the belief that Saldate could face some sort of prosecution for the misconduct outlined in the 9th Circuit’s ruling is being used to intimidate the 21-year Phoenix police veteran and keep him from testifying. [What's wrong with threatening a crooked cop with being jailed for perjury if he lies in court or lied in court to frame Debra Milke for murder?]

And there is no reason for Saldate to believe he could implicate himself in criminal activity by testifying, Montgomery said.

“There is no basis for the state’s witness to be able to assert the Fifth Amendment … because there is no criminal conduct,” Montgomery said.

The panel that sent Milke’s case back to Maricopa County Superior Court also requested that the opinion be sent to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for investigation into whether Saldate’s misconduct outlined in the ruling amounted to a violation of Arizonans’ rights. Federal prosecutors sent a letter to Montgomery’s office in late August saying that the statute of limitations had expired on any misconduct by Saldate. [So the message to Detective Armando Saldate is please help us frame Milke because the statute of limitations is expired and you can't be charged with any crimes you committed when you helped frame her the first time???]

“There is no objective basis for Mr. Saldate to fear prosecution from anyone for anything,” Montgomery said. [because if he commits perjury helping me frame Debra Milke for murder I won't prosecute him for anything]

But investigative documents released late Friday afternoon by Milke’s defense team indicate that Saldate was reluctant to speak with police and prosecutors soon after the appeals court released its opinion.

An investigator for the County Attorney’s Office wrote that he contacted Saldate in April to talk about the case and was unable to reach him for months until the investigator served Saldate with a subpoena in late July.

An attorney representing Saldate did not return a call for comment Friday afternoon.

Montgomery spent nearly 20 minutes of his news conference on Friday going through cases where the 9th Circuit cited court rulings that noted potential misconduct on Saldate’s part, none of which were related to Milke’s confession but all of which should have been provided to her defense team at the time of her trial, according to the appeals court.

But Montgomery is convinced the 9th Circuit got it wrong, and the three-judge panel that sent Milke’s case back to court had it in for Saldate, who retired from Phoenix police within a year of taking the confession.

“The 9th Circuit, on a wild goose chase, went after detective Saldate,” Montgomery said.

So, Montgomery plans to file a memo with Mroz, who is the assigned judge for Milke’s trial, in the hopes of making her aware of some of the shortcomings he perceives in the federal appeals court’s opinion.

“It is very unusual,” Montgomery said, adding that he thought a unique approach was warranted.

“I was dumbfounded when I read the (9th Circuit) opinion and in researching what had actually happened in those cases, that the reality is very different from how they were characterized and the conclusions that were drawn,” he said.

An attorney for Milke questioned Montgomery’s analysis of the 9th Circuit opinion, noting that the panel drew its conclusions about Saldate from completed court cases, not pending allegations against the former detective.

“If you even look at the way (Montgomery) analyzes the facts, he doesn’t do that very well,” attorney Michael Kimerer said. “What I think he’s trying to do, quite frankly, is use the media to confuse the facts and issues.”

Street Vendor’s Execution Stirs Anger in China

And when you read the article it sure sounds like Xia Junfeng got at least as much of a fair trail as Debra Milke and Johnathan Doody, both who may have been framed by the Maricopa Count Prosecutor for murder.

Another good reason to end the death penalty.

Source

Street Vendor’s Execution Stirs Anger in China

By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: September 25, 2013

BEIJING — There was never any doubt that Xia Junfeng was a killer: Four years ago, in a flash of panic and fear, he stabbed to death two urban enforcement officials who had sought to punish him for operating an unlicensed shish kebab stall.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Xia, a laid-off factory worker and father of a 13-year-old boy, was put to death in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning.

But in a country whose citizens widely support capital punishment, Mr. Xia’s execution has stoked a firestorm of public anger, much of it expressed through social media. Censors were kept busy all morning as tens of thousands of messages lit up China’s most popular microblog service, Sina Weibo, many of them condemning his execution.

While most focused on the belief that Mr. Xia had been unfairly convicted during a trial rife with irregularities, a number of people could not help but compare his fate with that of another recently convicted killer, Gu Kailai, the wife of a fallen Chinese leader who confessed to killing a British businessman but was given a suspended death sentence, which is akin to life in prison.

“If Gu Kailai can remain alive after poisoning someone to death then Xia Junfeng shouldn’t be put to death,” said Tong Zongjin, a professor at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. “It might be a flimsy dream to insist that everyone be treated equally before the law, but it’s nonetheless unseemly to turn this ideal into a joke.”

Mr. Xia’s case evoked sympathetic coverage even from some of China’s most reliably pro-government media. Global Times, a tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party, portrayed the case as a tragedy for all those involved, and the official Xinhua news agency ran a series of paintings by Mr. Xia’s son, including one that appeared to depict a child running to embrace his father.

While the outpouring of compassion for Mr. Xia reflects a widespread disdain for China’s urban management officials, known as chengguan, it also highlights a lack of faith in China’s judicial system, which is heavily weighed against defendants and often takes into account the interests of the state. Teng Biao, a lawyer who represented Mr. Xia during his appeal, suggested that the harsh sentence was intended to send the message that any challenges to the government — even to lowly code-enforcement officials — would not be tolerated. “The authorities wanted to show off their muscle,” he said.

Most details of the case are not in dispute. In May 2009, Mr. Xia and his wife were selling grilled meat on the streets of the provincial capital, Shenyang, when they were confronted by as many as 10 chengguan. The men grabbed the couple’s gas cooking cylinder, tossed the skewers on the ground and then proceeded to beat Mr. Xia when he resisted. The beatings reportedly continued in a nearby chengguan office. It was then, according to his lawyers, that Mr. Xia pulled a fruit knife from his pocket and stabbed three chengguan, killing two.

Mr. Teng said the court refused to consider testimony from six witnesses who would have made clear that Mr. Xia had acted in self-defense. In the end, the judge relied on testimony from the chengguan, as did a subsequent appeal. “This is a case of extreme unfairness under the law,” Mr. Teng said, noting that a conviction of intentional homicide requires proof that the crime was premeditated.

The case is among a string of violent confrontations involving chengguan, who are charged with enforcing sanitation codes and other rules. In July, a 56-year-old watermelon seller in Hunan Province collapsed and died on the street after a chengguan reportedly struck him in the head with a metal weight from his scale. But, the agents, say they too, are victims of abuse, pointing to an episode last March in which an agent seeking to stop illegal construction in Hubei Province was killed by an angry villager who attacked him with a pick ax.

Mr. Xia’s case is not dissimilar to that of a unlicensed sausage vendor in Beijing, who was convicted in 2007 of slashing to death an enforcement official who had seized his cart. The episode was closely followed by a sympathetic public but it had a different denouement: the man, Cui Yingjie, was given a suspended death sentence.

In recent months, as his case awaited a ruling from China’s highest court, Mr. Xia’s plight appeared to be drawing a groundswell of public support, which is often a factor in high-profile judicial decisions. Donations to his legal fund poured in and media accounts sought to humanize him, describing how he and his wife, a former hotel maid, had struggled to provide art classes for their only child.

A book of the boy’s paintings, published to raise funds for the family, sold out its entire 5,000-copy print run.

On Wednesday morning, after word came that the Supreme People’s Court had rejected his appeal, Mr. Xia’s wife, Zhang Jing, documented her final meeting with her husband in a series of microblog postings that riveted the country. She described how her mother fell to her knees wailing, and then recounted how the guards refused to allow one last photograph.

“Why won’t you allow a photo for his son to look at?” she wrote. “Why do you have to be so cruel?”

Patrick Zuo and Frank Ye contributed research.

AG Montgomery withholds evidence in Milke lynching????

Source

Milke retrial judge sends stern message to Montgomery over withholding letter

By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Sep 17, 2013 11:18 AM

The judge in the Debra Milke murder retrial sent a stern message to Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery this morning asking why his office had withheld a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office saying it had no intention of filing criminal charges against the detective who testified that Milke confessed to him in 1989.

Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz asked why she had to read about the letter in an article in The Arizona Republic instead of hearing from the case prosecutor, Deputy County Attorney Vince Imbordino, especially since the possibility criminal charges had been the subject of hearings since Imbordino received the letter.

Last week, former Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate informed the court through his attorney that he intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and would refuse to testify in the case.

In Milke’s first trial, Saldate claimed that Milke confessed to him that she was involved in the 1989 murder of her 4-year-old son, Christopher. Milke was convicted and sent to death row largely on the basis of that alleged confession, which was not recorded and to which there were no witnesses. Milke still claims she never confessed.

But in March, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Milke’s conviction and death sentence because her defense had not been given access to Saldate’s tarnished personnel record detailing alleged deceptions in other cases. The chief judge asked that Saldate be investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office to see if Milke’s civil rights were violated.

Saldate subsequently requested an attorney to represent him in a hearing that was scheduled for Sept. 23 to determine whether the confession was admissible in the new trial. Imbordino asked the court to provide an attorney for Saldate on Aug. 23 and Mroz obliged on Aug. 30. That attorney, Larry Debus, then informed the court on Sept. 12 that Saldate may not testify. Mroz responded that if Saldate did not testify, the confession would not be admitted into evidence.

Montgomery has repeatedly stressed to the media that the 9th Circuit ruling was incorrect and that certain court rulings impugning Saldate were incorrect. On Sept. 13, Montgomery held a press conference at which he distributed an Aug. 30 letter from an assistant U.S. Attorney saying that the statute of limitations had run on possible criminal charges against Saldate.

In today’s ruling, Mroz ordered Montgomery and Imbordino to make the letter available to her and to Milke’s defense team, and that Imbordino file a written explanation by Friday “as to why the State did not inform the court of the federal prosecutors’ letter and instead chose to reveal the information through a press conference, if in fact the letter exists.”

Mroz cancelled the Sept. 23 hearing on supressing the confession and ordered the opposing attorneys to appear on that date to discuss the status of the case and scheduling matters.

The County Attorney's Office will not comment while the case is pending.

Montgomery to Armando - help me frame Milke and no perjury charges???

Source

Montgomery: Milke case detective being intimidated

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Sep 13, 2013 10:39 PM

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery delivered a message on Friday to the detective who allegedly received the disputed confession at the heart of the Debra Milke murder case: You have no reason to avoid testifying because you fear prosecution.

A lawyer for former Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate told a trial judge on Thursday that he had recommended Saldate take advantage of his constitutional protection against self-incrimination if he is called to the witness stand in Milke’s retrial, a move that would bar her alleged confession from being considered in the case.

The confession was crucial to her conviction in the 1989 shooting death of her 4-year-old son, Christopher, which left two men on death row and sent Milke there for 22 years until her release last week.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out her conviction and death sentence earlier this year because the trial court refused to let her introduce evidence that could have discredited the confession. Prosecutors “remained unconstitutionally silent” about Saldate’s history of misconduct, including lying, the panel wrote.

And if Saldate doesn’t testify during Milke’s retrial, the confession will not be allowed into the retrial, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Rosa Mroz said Thursday.

In pointed remarks aimed at Saldate, his attorney and lawyers representing Milke, Montgomery said the belief that Saldate could face some sort of prosecution for the misconduct outlined in the 9th Circuit’s ruling is being used to intimidate the 21-year Phoenix police veteran and keep him from testifying.

And there is no reason for Saldate to believe he could implicate himself in criminal activity by testifying, Montgomery said.

“There is no basis for the state’s witness to be able to assert the Fifth Amendment … because there is no crim- inal conduct,” Montgomery said.

The panel that sent Milke’s case back to Maricopa County Superior Court also requested that the opinion be sent to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for investigation into whether Saldate’s misconduct outlined in the ruling amounted to a violation of Arizonans’ rights. Federal prosecutors sent a letter to Montgomery’s office in late August saying that the statute of limitations had expired on any misconduct by Saldate.

“There is no objective basis for Mr. Saldate to fear prosecution from anyone for anything,” Montgomery said.

But investigative documents released late Friday afternoon by Milke’s defense team indicate that Saldate was reluctant to speak with police and prosecutors soon after the appeals court released its opinion.

An investigator for the County Attorney’s Office wrote that he contacted Saldate in April to talk about the case and was unable to reach him for months until the investigator served Saldate with a subpoena in late July.

An attorney representing Saldate did not return a call for comment Friday afternoon.

Montgomery spent nearly 20 minutes of his news conference on Friday going through cases where the 9th Circuit cited court rulings that noted potential misconduct on Saldate’s part, none of which were related to Milke’s confession but all of which should have been provided to her defense team at the time of her trial, according to the appeals court.

But Montgomery is convinced the 9th Circuit got it wrong, and the three-judge panel that sent Milke’s case back to court had it in for Saldate, who retired from Phoenix police within a year of taking the confession.

“The 9th Circuit, on a wild goose chase, went after detective Saldate,” Montgomery said.

So, Montgomery plans to file a memo with Mroz, who is the assigned judge for Milke’s trial, in the hopes of making her aware of some of the shortcomings he perceives in the federal appeals court’s opinion.

“It is very unusual,” Montgomery said, adding that he thought a unique approach was warranted.

“I was dumbfounded when I read the (9th Circuit) opinion and in researching what had actually happened in those cases, that the reality is very different from how they were characterized and the conclusions that were drawn,” he said.

An attorney for Milke questioned Montgomery’s analysis of the 9th Circuit opinion, noting that the panel drew its conclusions about Saldate from completed court cases, not pending allegations against the former detective.

“If you even look at the way (Montgomery) analyzes the facts, he doesn’t do that very well,” attorney Michael Kimerer said. “What I think he’s trying to do, quite frankly, is use the media to confuse the facts and issues.”

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