Homeless in Arizona

Detective Scarcella is a liar who would frame is mother for murder????

As Doubts Over Detective Grew, Prosecutors Also Made Missteps

By FRANCES ROBLES

Published: September 5, 2013 118 Comments

After a murder defendant took the stand and accused a Brooklyn homicide detective, Louis Scarcella, of beating a false confession out of him, the detective had someone important vouch for his trustworthiness to the jury: the prosecutor.

“The defense wants you to accept that Detective Scarcella is going to come in here and throw away 24 years of his life, wants you to believe that Scarcella is going to risk his pension, his livelihood and his profession to obtain a confession,” said Kyle C. Reeves, then a prosecutor with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. “He’s going to risk all that? Very, very unlikely.”

Despite the confident speech, by the time Mr. Reeves defended the detective in that 1997 murder trial there was already growing evidence available to prosecutors that Mr. Scarcella’s work was marred by persistent and troubling patterns.

In a 1983 hearing, a judge said that Mr. Scarcella had answered “I don’t remember” so many times on the stand that the defendant accused of attempted rape had more credibility than the detective. In the years that followed, at least six murder defendants claimed in their trials or appeals that the detective had developed their confessions himself, noting the customary video documenting the interrogation did not exist. And one witness had appeared in so many of his cases that even defendants in other cases cited her as proof that the detective was soliciting false testimony.

But prosecutors continued to pursue the cases Mr. Scarcella brought and continued to tell jurors and appeals judges to ignore any accusations of wrongdoing.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, has ordered a review of nearly 40 cases investigated by Mr. Scarcella, who is now retired. The review came after Mr. Hynes’s office revealed six months ago that the detective’s flawed investigation had put an innocent man behind bars for two decades and news reports found further problems with his work.

An examination by The New York Times of some cases Mr. Scarcella handled indicates that prosecutors in the district attorney’s office itself either ignored warning signs in the detective’s work or made missteps of their own.

“Our experience all around the city is that errors by police and errors by prosecutors go hand in hand and frequently become a toxic mixture,” said Steven Banks, the chief attorney for the Legal Aid Society, which represents many of the defendants whose cases are under review. “There are a series of circumstances that should have set off alarm bells both at the precinct and in the prosecutor’s office.”

Mr. Scarcella declined to comment on Thursday, saying he had retained a lawyer.

In defending his cases, Mr. Scarcella has repeatedly cited the oversight of prosecutors. “If what I did was so bad, it shouldn’t have been brought to trial,” he said in an interview in April.

The district attorney’s office has so far refused to release a full list of cases under review and declined to discuss particular ones. In addition, it is unclear what individual prosecutors knew about Mr. Scarcella and the accusations against him. But the potential problems seen in a sampling of cases in which Mr. Scarcella testified raises the prospect that innocent people may be serving life sentences for crimes they did not commit, or that guilty people whose cases were compromised could go free.

That 1997 murder case in which the prosecutor rose to defend Mr. Scarcella was emblematic of flaws in the detective’s cases: contradictory witnesses, disputed confessions and prosecutors willing to accept his findings and take them to trial.

Jabbar Washington, who is serving 25 years to life, was convicted of taking part in a home invasion in 1995 that left one person dead and two others seriously injured. The case against him was built around his own confession and the testimony of a woman who said she saw the crime, but there were reasons to be skeptical of both.

Mr. Washington claimed the detective had told him what to say and then beat him until he confessed. The district attorney’s office accepted the confession, which had been videotaped, even though it started with the same two sentences uttered by suspects Mr. Scarcella had interrogated in other cases. Mr. Reeves, who defended the detective’s honesty during his closing argument, declined to comment.

The lead witness told Mr. Scarcella she could identify the killer, who had worn a mask, but she was unable to do so at trial. In response to an appeal years later, an assistant district attorney, Marie-Claude P. Wrenn-Myers, acknowledged that the witness had been “equivocal and somewhat inarticulate.”

“But,” she added, “the jury could consider Detective Scarcella’s testimony in tandem with hers.”

Critics, including political opponents, defense lawyers and inmates, have questioned the propriety of Mr. Hynes leading the investigation into his office’s work, particularly because most of the cases under review were prosecuted on his watch. (The district attorney’s office said 10 of the cases were closed under Elizabeth Holtzman, who was district attorney before Mr. Hynes took office in 1990, but his office defended them if they were appealed.)

The critics note that Mr. Hynes, 78, is seeking re-election and that Mr. Scarcella’s daughter works in the office as a prosecutor. In a brief interview, Mr. Hynes said that so far no glaring problems had been discovered in the review. He said the detective’s sloppy work was not brought to the office’s attention until a year ago, when it reopened the case that led to an exoneration. Even in that case, he found no reason to blame the prosecutors.

“I am not going to second-guess the assistants involved,” Mr. Hynes said. “They are very good trial lawyers.”

Glossing Over Actions

In March, Mr. Hynes announced that he would support the release of David Ranta, who had served two decades in prison for the 1990 murder of an Orthodox rabbi. The district attorney’s staff documented a series of problems with Mr. Scarcella’s work in the case, like covering up the steps he took investigating another suspect.

But in court records and public interviews Mr. Hynes and his staff glossed over questionable actions by prosecutors that included making unauthorized tape recordings, overlooking inconsistencies in the evidence and offering a generous deal to an informer even after he changed his stories.

Those in the office at the time recall significant pressure from Mr. Hynes to win a conviction. Mr. Hynes, who had recently been elected district attorney, represented the state at the arraignment and also appeared at the grand jury. (A spokesman said the district attorney initially had “no recollection” of being at either hearing, though he later said Mr. Hynes remembered attending the grand jury proceedings.)

A two-month investigation initially focused on another man who prosecutors now believe was the real killer. But when that suspect died, Mr. Scarcella switched his focus to Mr. Ranta.

Mr. Hynes assigned the case to two top prosecutors in the office: Suzanne M. Mondo, now a judge, and Barry M. Schreiber, now a private lawyer and campaign contributor to Mr. Hynes. They were handed a case built on the words of a prostitute, a drug addict, a rapist and a jailhouse informer who had been lavished with favors by Mr. Scarcella for weeks.

Prosecutors promised the informer — Alan Bloom, who was facing over 100 years in prison for a string of armed robberies — immunity from charges related to the murder and a sentence of as little as three and a third years for the robberies. They gave him the deal even though he had failed his first lie-detector test and initially named someone else as responsible for the murder.

Other problems were later discovered. Mr. Ranta’s confession included incorrect key details, like the color of the getaway car. A hair sample found in the vehicle was not a match for him, and years later, when investigators sought to test it against another suspect, it had been destroyed.

A witness was less than certain when he identified Mr. Ranta in a police lineup, saying “I think,” but when the district attorney’s office made a transcript of the recording it edited out the hedge and did not turn over the audio tape until the close of trial. Two decades later, that witness recanted and said that just before entering the lineup room, where a prosecutor was present, a police officer told him whom to pick. That admission forced Mr. Hynes’s office to reopen the case.

That is when investigators found a previously unknown tape recording made by an informer at the request of prosecutors but never turned over to the defense. On it, an informer chatted on the phone with Mr. Ranta, who called from jail to profess his innocence and mention other witnesses who could have helped his case. Supervisors at the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit were angered by the discovery of the tape because they felt it was an unauthorized recording because Mr. Ranta already had counsel, a lawyer familiar with the case said.

Mr. Schreiber, who did not respond to requests for comment, told his former colleagues that he did not recall making the recording, court records show. The trial lawyer, Michael F. Baum, the first to bring the problems with the case to the office’s attention, said, “The fact is, there were red flags all over this case.”

A Long-Evident Pattern

Defense lawyers called them “magical confessions” — the surprising admissions of guilt that Mr. Scarcella was able to quickly elicit from stubborn suspects. While the district attorney’s office is now reviewing questions about how he managed to get those confessions, the pattern of his questionable tactics was evident for years.

Sundhe Moses, who was accused of killing a 4-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet, took the stand in his own defense in 1997 to say that he signed a confession only because the detective had knocked him around. Mr. Moses says he told the prosecutor that the detective had abused him and that the confession was fiction.

“He didn’t want to hear it,” Mr. Moses said by phone from prison, where he is serving 16 years to life.

In some cases, appeal records show inmates claimed that when they confessed to Mr. Scarcella, the details they allegedly gave did not even match the evidence, that they had been tricked or forced to make untrue statements, or that they had been asked to sign a blank piece of paper only to have the supposed confession written on it later. In some cases, when the prosecutor arrived to videotape a confession, the suspect denied telling Mr. Scarcella he had committed the crime.

Hector Lopez, who was convicted of arson and murder in 1995 and has been writing letters from prison detailing evidence he says shows his confession was fabricated, said it was odd that prosecutors had turned on Mr. Scarcella.

“They supported him all those years,” Mr. Lopez said. “Now that he is retired they are throwing him under the bus? If he was still working, they’d be covering it up.”

One of Mr. Scarcella’s former sergeants, Dennis Singleton, said that years before he retired in 1999, some detectives grew skeptical of the investigator’s cocky “superstar” image and refused to work with him. But if Mr. Scarcella took shortcuts, Mr. Singleton felt that the district attorney’s office should share the blame.

Eventually a similar skepticism emerged in corners of the district attorney’s office. One current top prosecutor said that even those who respected the detective cooled toward him after 1992, when video taken by a defense investigator showed Mr. Scarcella removing informers from jail for unauthorized outings. Some prosecutors began to review the detective’s work more thoroughly, the lawyer recalled.

But even some of those who were suspicious of Mr. Scarcella acknowledged that they mostly kept their concerns to themselves, saying that his ability to clear cases had made him popular with the bosses.

“Some prosecutors were leery; they didn’t trust it,” said one former investigator, who did not want to be identified publicly while criticizing his former supervisors. “He was one of the best detectives in the city. He’s turning over all these cases, and the bosses loved him. You’re going to go to the boss and say, ‘This doesn’t look right’?’”

Peter J. Tartaglia, a former police lieutenant who worked with Mr. Scarcella, had little patience for the second-guessing of the detective’s work.

“Every single one of those cases were scrutinized by high up,” Mr. Tartaglia said. “They were scrutinized by the bureau chief of homicide. Do you know who the bureau chief of homicide had coffee with every day? Charlie Hynes. If there was any doubt any bureau chief had, Charlie Hynes heard that question and the answer.”

Some prosecutors have emerged to defend Mr. Scarcella. They say what may now seem like red flags to others were just a reality of working in law enforcement, particularly in that era.

Douglas M. Nadjari, a former assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case against Mr. Lopez and is convinced of his guilt, said that dealing with defendants who denied confessing did not necessarily mean the admission was fake. He said Mr. Scarcella simply had a gift for getting suspects to open up and they sometimes regretted doing so.

“Lou would take the confession and say, ‘He’s ready to talk,’ ” Mr. Nadjari said. “When I got there with the video recorder, sometimes they clammed up. It’s a sign they thought it over a second time.”

Jeffrey I. Ginsberg, a former assistant district attorney who also prosecuted two of the convictions under review, said the cases might look bad in retrospect, but they needed to be considered in the context of the 1980s and ’90s, when the crack epidemic was helping fuel a crime wave.

“The witnesses often came in orange jumpsuits,” said Mr. Ginsberg, referring to the outfit worn by inmates. “I was not afraid to go to trial on a weak case. I was not afraid to lose. I was not lying and cheating to get a conviction.”

‘Willful Blindness’

One witness who came from jail was Rayquan Shabazz, a burglar with a knack for getting caught. He kept the telephone number of Kenneth M. Taub, the chief of the Brooklyn district attorney’s homicide unit, tucked in his Bible to have it handy whenever he was arrested.

With a budding career as a jailhouse informer, Mr. Shabazz reached out to Mr. Taub in 1996, promising information that would help win a conviction in a gruesome murder.

Harry Kaufman, a subway token booth clerk, was working an overnight shift at the Kingston-Throop subway station when a group of teenagers approached his booth brandishing a soda bottle filled with gasoline. One of the teenagers squirted the gasoline into the coin slot; another dropped a match. The blast was heard a block away.

Mr. Scarcella, the investigator on the case, quickly zeroed in on Thomas Malik. The case seemed strong: the other teenagers pointed to him as the one who lighted the match, and Mr. Malik confessed on video. But there were problems for the prosecutors because testimony from co-defendants was inadmissible in court and Mr. Malik claimed he confessed only after Mr. Scarcella slammed his head into a locker.

Enter Mr. Shabazz. He told the jury that he had heard Mr. Malik not only admit to the crime, but also plot to have his co-defendants killed as well.

Mr. Malik was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life. Mr. Shabazz, who had previously testified for prosecutors in both Brooklyn and Queens, told the jury that Mr. Taub helped get his sentence reduced.

Being a jailhouse mole was so rewarding that Mr. Shabazz kept at it, even as it became increasingly clear that many of his tips were false.

Six years after Mr. Malik’s conviction, law enforcement agencies had wasted so many resources investigating Mr. Shabazz’s tips that the inmate was criminally charged and, after he pleaded guilty to false reporting, was barred from contacting law enforcement as long as he was in state custody.

“This defendant has persistently made up false reports about the planned assassinations of a judge, prosecutors, correction and police personnel and witnesses in an attempt to curry favor with law enforcement and obtain consideration,” Justice Carol Berkman of State Supreme Court in Manhattan wrote in 2003. “This defendant poses a very significant threat to the integrity of the criminal justice process.”

Mr. Malik’s lawyer, Ronald L. Kuby, who is seeking to have his conviction overturned, said: “Using a man like Rayquan Shabazz to be a roving informer on an intermittent basis is prosecutorial misconduct. It’s part of institutional willful blindness.”

The files on the nearly 40 cases under review, including Mr. Malik’s, have been distributed to lawyers throughout the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which could lead them to confront errors and oversights made by current leaders in the office.

District Attorney Hynes, known for standing by longtime lieutenants even when they face accusations of misconduct, also convened a civilian panel to examine his office’s investigation of the Scarcella cases and to make recommendations. That panel includes several of his friends and donors.

The review has complicated Mr. Hynes’s bid to be elected for a seventh term. His opponent in the Democratic primary next week, Kenneth P. Thompson, 47, a private lawyer and former federal prosecutor, has criticized how the investigation has been conducted and questioned whether the problems are more far-reaching.

Mr. Hynes said that if any cases appeared to be the “same as Ranta” — which led to the initial exoneration — he would immediately move to have the convict released. “We have not gotten to a point where we have found anything that appears to be problematic,” he said.

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.

Source

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.”

More articles on NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella