Judge: No conflict of interest
Convicted killer’s lawyers’ ties examined
PORT ALLEN — Death row inmate Michael Garcia was denied a first step toward a new trial Friday by a judge who ruled there was no conflict of interest at play during the defendant’s first-degree murder trial for the 2006 fatal stabbing of young transient man, Matthew Millican.
A six-day hearing to iron out the conflict issue raised on appeal came down to whether the three public defenders who represented Garcia and his codefendants are employees of the Indigent Defender’s Office — which would amount to a conflict — or independent contractors.
Attorneys with the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans previously argued to the Louisiana Supreme Court that the three defense attorneys who represented Garcia and two other men implicated in the murder all worked as staff employees for the 18th Judicial District Indigent Defender’s Office.
Those circumstances equate to a conflict of interest, an attorney handling Garcia’s appeal wrote in a petition to the Supreme Court.
Defense attorney Tommy Thompson, who represented Garcia, 33, during the trial, has said that he had no contact with other attorneys representing his client’s codefendants.
Attorney Michael Parks, who represented Garcia’s elder brother, Danil Lee Garcia, 40, in 2008, has said that in representing his client, he didn’t pay attention to Michael Garcia’s case, had no input in the case and didn’t discuss strategy with the other defense attorneys.
Yolanda Batiste, the attorney who represented the third codefendant, James Edward “Fat Boy” Nelson II, 28, is deceased.
The state high court, however, ruled in September the trial court must hold a hearing to determine whether a conflict existed at trial.
Billy Sothern, the attorney handling Garcia’s appeal, asserted that internal payroll, auditing and worker’s compensation documents from the Indigent Defender’s Office all characterize defense attorneys as employees.
Those lawyers also receive health insurance benefits through the office that other staffers don’t get, he said.
But Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Engolio argued that the Indigent Defender’s Office relies on a pool of available lawyers who work on year-to-year contracts, handle cases independently out of their private offices and who receive neither annual leave allotments nor retirement benefits.
The Indigent Defender’s Office, she said, “is not a law firm.”
In making his ruling, District Judge Robin Free said there were valid arguments on both sides about the way the Indigent Defender’s Office runs.
The attorneys are treated as employees for tax purposes, he acknowledged, but don’t receive sick leave, compensation time or many of the other benefits to which staff employees are entitled by law.
“The common thread is control,” Free said. The Indigent Defender’s Office, he said, “doesn’t control the means by which the attorneys accomplish their jobs. I think they’re independent contractors and not employees.”
After the ruling, Sothern said he would appeal Free’s decision to the state Supreme Court in another effort to get his client a new trial.
If the murder case is retried, prosecutors likely would have to rely on videotaped testimony and transcripts from their star witness in the first trial, the victim’s woman companion, Megan Teresi.
She was found dead in Portland, Ore., in April 2009, investigators said. Teresi’s cause of death is unknown.
During the trial, Teresi testified she and Millican, the victim, were asleep outdoors behind a Port Allen motel when Michael and Danil Garcia, both of Lansing, Mich., and Nelson, of Gibsonton, Fla., armed with knives and machetes, kidnapped them and took them to a remote area.
Teresi testified that the men hog-tied Millican with his own boot laces and then raped her repeatedly while Millican was forced to watch.
She further testified that Michael Garcia and Nelson led Millican away at knife point and were laughing when they later returned without him.
Michael Garcia was convicted of first-degree murder on June 6, 2008, and sentenced to death.
Danil Garcia pleaded guilty to principal to second-degree murder in July 2008 and was sentenced to life in prison.
Nelson pleaded guilty in December 2008 to conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, three counts of forcible rape, second-degree kidnapping and armed robbery. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison in January 2009.