Metro planning no jail changes after witness placed with suspect

Metro Police will make no procedural changes after investigating how an admitted killer was placed in a holding cell with a man he was planning to testify against, a department spokesman said.

"It was just an error of writing the wrong disposition on a tag," Metro spokesman Steve Meriwether said Monday of the early December incident.

A memo has been written to jail supervisors instructing them "to double check and follow through," Meriwether said. "There will be no procedural changes."

The correctional facility has a policy to keep witnesses segregated from crime suspects, Meriwether said.

Prior to a court hearing, David Lemons, a key witness in a murder-for-hire case, was picked up on a warrant as a witness and placed in a holding cell with a group of inmates that included John Sipes, also known as Vito Bruno, one of two people Lemons said hired him to kill computer programmer Larry Volk in 1990.

Lemons suffered a bruise under his left eye from a head butt during an altercation in the cell, he told District Judge Joseph Bonaventure.

"We were very fortunate that Vito Bruno was in shackles at the time and that corrections officers responded quickly," said David Roger, chief deputy district attorney who is handling the case. He noted that he could have lost a key witness through either the intimidation, more serious potential injuries or death.

Normally when someone is picked up on a witness warrant, officers at the Clark County Detention Center make a notation that the person is a witness at the time of booking, Meriwether said. That notation was not made in this case.

Lemons was taken into custody on the material witness warrant because prosecutors had lost touch with him for the June 14 trial of Sipes and his aunt, Soni Beckman.

Sipes wasn't scheduled to be in court that day, according to the district attorney's office. A paperwork snafu placed Sipes' case on the court calendar.

Because Sipes and Lemons were headed to Bonaventure's courtroom, they were placed in the same holding cell by jailers who were unaware of their ties, officials said. Bonaventure released Lemons after he promised to keep in contact with prosecutors.

Sipes is still in the Clark County Detention Center pending a June 10 trial date. Beckman posted $200,000 cash and is free on bail awaiting trial.

Roger said the district attorney's office was clear enough on Lemons' paperwork that such a situation should not have arisen, but he declined to comment on the police department's decision not to change its procedures, saying he is not familiar enough with them.

In 1993 Lemons was acquitted of murder in the slaying of Volk. He later admitted to killing Volk and told police that Sipes and Beckman hired him for $5,000 to do the slaying. Lemons cannot be tried again for the crime after being acquitted.

Volk was killed after informing gaming authorities that the operators of American Coin Company had instructed him to alter the computer chips in video poker machines to prevent the royal flush payoff.

After Volk revealed the computer chip scam, the company -- the state's fourth largest slot route operator, which had more than 1,000 machines in Las Vegas -- was closed by state gaming regulators in 1990.

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