Tuesday, February 07, 2012

1/4/12 Ogden Shootings Story Update: Defense Attorney Seeks Funds for Stewart Investigator

Stewart's lawyer: "No more jailhouse interviews"

More significant developments in the 1/4/12 Ogden Shootings matter, via a morning Standard-Examiner story which we link below. Here's the gist:

1) "The defense is asking Weber County to pay $10,000 for an investigator for Matthew David Stewart."

In terms of the price of expert witnesses and investigative resources in this factually complicated case, this first $10k's just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

2) "Stewart's lawyer also plans to tell his client not to do any more jailhouse interviews."

In our last WCF article on this subject we a couple of unanswered queries: "Whether speaking to the press at this still relatively stage of the proceedings is a good idea is anybody's guess." "Whether this interview occurred in the presence and under the supervision of Mr. Stewart's defense lawyer, Mr. Richards, Mr. Carlisle's article doesn't say."

On the basis of the morning response of defense attorney Randy Richards, it appears that the answer is a resounding "No."

Whether the unfortunate Trib interview resulted from a failure of "attorney-client communication" or a breakdown in "client control," it's definitely a problem which the defense team must fix. The old axiom "loose lips sink ships" was never more true than in a capital murder case, folks.

Read this morning's new Scott Schwebke writeup here:
3) In an additional online Associated Press story, the Standard reports that Stewart's case is "set for a scheduling conference in Ogden’s 2nd District Court" this morning:
Notably, this latter article reports that Stewart has yet to enter a plea, in which connection we'll predict that no plea will be entered in this matter at all, until Stewart's defense team has retained and conferred with "psychological experts," a few experts on "ballistics," and many other "experts" from other forensic fields, of course.

That's it for now folks.

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