Thread: Attorney general's office must pay $40k for defense team's sleuth in Missouri death-p

Attorney general's office must pay $40k for defense team's sleuth in Missouri death-penalty case

By Kim Bell St. Louis Post-Dispatch





ST. LOUIS • Attorneys for Pablo Serrano-Vitorino, an undocumented immigrant and Mexican national, say sending an investigator to Mexico to research his childhood and background is key to providing him the best defense in his pending murder trial in St. Louis.

And in an unusual ruling, a St. Louis judge has ordered the Missouri attorney general’s office to pay the bulk of the cost of that defense team’s sleuth.

The Missouri Public Defender office is representing Serrano-Vitorino in the killing of a man in Montgomery County, Mo., in 2016. The public defender system is financially strapped, they say; the office doesn’t have its own “mitigation specialist” who can speak Spanish, travel to Mexico and do the necessary investigation, partly because it’s so dangerous there.


So they found a woman who could do the work for them — at a price of $59,000. St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer ruled earlier this year — and reaffirmed on Friday — that the attorney general’s office has to pay up to $40,000 toward the bill. The state appeals court and the Missouri Supreme Court have upheld Ohmer’s decision.

Ohmer concedes he’s never made prosecutors pay for a defense investigation before. “It’s a very unique situation,” the judge said Friday. But he said the case posed several unique challenges.

Serrano-Vitorino, 42, is accused of killing four people in Kansas and, while fleeing through Missouri, his truck broke down in Montgomery County. Prosecutors allege he killed Randy Nordman while looking for another vehicle. The Nordman home is just off Interstate 70. Serrano-Vitorino’s trial was moved to St. Louis on a change of venue.

A trial for the Kansas crimes would follow any Missouri trial. He is charged there with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jeremy Waters, 36; Michael Capps, 41; and brothers Clint Harter, 27, and Austin Harter, 29. Serrano-Vitorino lived next door to Capps; he allegedly burst into his home with a rifle and shot all four men.

The killings received nationwide attention in the ongoing debate over legal and illegal immigration. Nordman’s widow testified at a U.S. Senate committee hearing that discussed potential missteps of federal immigration officials. A lawsuit is pending in Kansas over the issue.

The trial in St. Louis was set to begin this fall and last nearly a month. However, in court Friday, Ohmer said the trial wouldn’t begin until October 2019. He pushed it back a year at the request of the public defender office because the lead defense attorney, Donald Catlett, is retiring June 1. The office will have to hire a replacement and bring him up to speed, said Heather Vodnansky of the public defender’s office.

Three relatives of Nordman sat in Ohmer’s courtroom for the latest hearing. They listened to the wranglings over who would pay for an investigator to go to Mexico.

Serrano-Vitorino was in court too, looking haggard, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit with his hands shackled. He speaks only Spanish, so a court-ordered interpreter was at his side.

Afterward, one of Nordman’s relatives, a man, told defense attorney Vodnansky: “Just get the show on the road. That’s all we’re asking. Quit delaying.”

Ohmer also seemed frustrated with the length of time the case is taking to come to trial. “This has drug on here long enough,” the judge said.

Serrano-Vitorino’s attorneys said in court filings this year that it was important for them to be able to conduct a proper background investigation on their client, because the state is seeking the death penalty.

“Without access to evidence regarding Pablo’s mental health, medical, and social histories available only in Mexico, as well as character evidence available only through his family and friends who only speak Spanish, the jury will be deprived of mitigating evidence that it is constitutionally required to consider,” the filings said.

The mitigation specialist has to spend “a great deal of time” interviewing his relatives, teachers, employers and others important in his life, the filing said.

In addition, the investigator has to collect medical records and other documents in Mexico.

Such investigations are time-consuming in any death-penalty case but even more so, his lawyers say, when the evidence is in Mexico. Records might not be easy to find and the investigator might have to seek out “alternative sources for records like pharmacists and folk healers.”

Mexico doesn’t have databases to find witnesses, roads are unpaved and unmarked and the investigator not only must speak the language but know the culture, his attorneys argued.

Serrano-Vitorino lived in Mexico until about the age of 17. He was convicted in March 2003 in Los Angeles of making a terrorist threat, sentenced to two years in prison and deported to Mexico on April 5, 2004. It’s unclear why he was back in the United States or why, after subsequent run-ins with the law, he remained here.

The purpose of the mitigation process in a death-penalty case is for the defense team to try to show circumstances in a defendant’s background that might call for a sentence less than death. They look at education, the environment he grew up in — was it rich or poor, crime-ridden or not; was he exposed to toxic chemicals on a farm; does the birth record show if he was a low-weight baby. They look for psychological problems in the family and any history of drugs or alcohol abuse. It could take interviews with upward of 400 people to learn the kinds of details in preparation for a death-penalty case, a public defender’s office official said.

The only person the public defender’s office found who is qualified to do all that, they say, is a woman named Kristina L. Bishop, who charges $125 an hour for investigation work and $75 an hour for travel. Her investigation would take her to Juarez, Chihuahua, Durango and Zacatecas, Mexico, and her total estimate was $59,000. In explaining the dangers of the area, the public defender’s office told the St. Louis judge that nationwide murders there hit a record high, averaging 70 a day last May.

Michael Barrett, who is head of the Missouri public defender system, had said earlier in court, “I have no way of ensuring the safety of employees if I send them to Mexico.”

Since the 1990s, the public defender’s office in Missouri has had its own in-house mitigation specialists, and they earn $38,000 to $42,000 a year. The cost of hiring Bishop for this one case is more than in-house specialists make in a year, and they work on more than one case a year. It’s nearly as much as what an assistant public defender earns with about five years’ experience.

Assistant Attorney General Kevin Zoellner asked Ohmer on Friday to reconsider his ruling that makes the state attorney general’s office pay. He said it could be viewed as a “troubling aspect” of a death-penalty case if prosecutors are footing the bill for the defense.

Zoellner suggested that the public defender ask the Missouri Legislature for more money, or that perhaps the judicial circuit in St. Louis pay for Bishop’s investigation. But Ohmer wouldn’t budge. Ohmer said he hoped Bishop could do her work in Mexico and have a report ready by early September, when the judge meets with lawyers for an update on the case. He said all bills should go to the attorney general’s office for reimbursement up to $40,000.

Attorney general's office must pay $40k for defense team's sleuth in ...

Missouri should have kicked him back to Kansas where he murdered 4 people.

More money wasted on career foreign criminals..IMO

Man accused of killing five people in Kansas and Missouri was in U.S. illegally
By MATT PEARCE
MAR 09, 2016

Mexican man accused of killing five people in the Midwest this week was a convicted felon living in the U.S. illegally, and he had not been deported despite being arrested at least twice in recent years, federal officials said.Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino, 40, of Kansas City, Kan., was captured in rural eastern Missouri early Wednesday morning after going missing from Kansas on Monday and then sparking a 17-hour manhunt in Missouri on Tuesday once his truck was spotted along an interstate.https://www.alipac.us/f12/man-accuse...egally-329954/

Suspect in two-state killing spree arrested in Missouri

Published March 09, 2016
FoxNews.com

https://www.alipac.us/f12/suspect-tw...ssouri-329876/

MO - Illegal Immigrant Was Arrested in Warrenton Twice Before Murders

Posted: Saturday, March 19, 2016 6:32 pm
By Tim Schmidt, Missourian Staff Writer

A Mexican national who police say fatally shot five men in two states last week was arrested twice in Warrenton in 2004, months after he was deported and re-entered the country illegally.
https://www.alipac.us/f12/mo-illegal...urders-330384/

Missouri seeking death penalty in Montgomery County homicide

Wednesday, April 20th 2016, 8:29 pm CEDT Wednesday, April 20th 2016, 8:29 pm CEDT

MONTGOMERY CITY, Mo. (AP) - A hearing for a Mexican national accused of killing a man in Missouri and four others in Kansas is being postponed, with prosecutors planning to seek the death penalty in the Missouri case.

Court records show that a Montgomery County judge on Wednesday delayed Pablo Serrano-Vitorino's preliminary hearing from April 28 to May 12 at the request of Serrano's attorneys. Prosecutors didn't oppose the delay.
https://www.alipac.us/f12/missouri-s...micide-331559/

The path of a mass murderer

BY GARRETT BERGQUIST FRIDAY, APRIL 29TH 2016

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — By the time Pablo Serrano-Vitorino surrendered to police in the early morning hours of March 9, he was accused of five murders in two states.

Prosecutors say Serrano-Vitorino fatally shot four men at a home in Kansas City, Kan. on the night of March 7. He then allegedly drove his pickup truck most of the way across Missouri before abandoning it in Montgomery County. On the morning of March 8, police say he shot and killed a fifth man, New Florence resident Randy Nordman. Shortly after Serrano-Vitorino was taken into custody, it emerged that the Mexican national was in the United States illegally.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Serrano-Vitorino entered the United States illegally in 1993. In 1998, Los Angeles County court documents show he was arrested for fighting in public. Then, in 2003, he allegedly pointed a rifle at his wife and children. He was deported back to Mexico on April 5, 2004. He slipped back into the United States prior to 2014.
https://www.alipac.us/f12/path-mass-murderer-331847/

Widow of man allegedly murdered by illegal alien blames ICE
March 01, 2017

A Missouri widow told U.S. senators Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed her family after an illegal alien went on a killing spree, allegedly taking four lives, plus her husband.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs heard the testimony of Julie Nordman, whose husband, Randy, was murdered in their New Florence, Missouri, home in early 2016. The panel also heard from law enforcement officials citing similar tragedies committed by individuals who had illegally entered the United States.

Nordman told the committee that had ICE authorities “just done their jobs” the victims would still be alive.

https://www.alipac.us/f12/widow-man-...es-ice-344307/

Father sues ICE over handling of Mexican national who killed 4 in Kansas
​JANUARY 23, 2018 BY POST STAFF

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The father of one of five people allegedly killed by a Mexican national who was in the country illegally is suing federal immigration authorities.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Kansas City, Kansas, claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had two chances to detain and deport 42-year-old Pablo Serrano-Vitorino before March 2016, when four men were killed in Kansas and one in Missouri.
https://www.alipac.us/f12/father-sue...1/#post1582405