Judge halts defense questioning about other suspects

VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. - Lawyers for three men accused of a wild horse slaughter were temporarily blocked Thursday from questioning detectives about possible other suspects.

"I want to show they do not have the right defendants in this case," defense lawyer Scott Freeman argued in Storey County Justice Court.

"There's only a few names we want to bring up that they investigated who could be and should be suspects," he said.

Storey County Deputy District Attorney Sharon Claassen said it was a stunt to try to create reasonable doubt and was beyond the scope of the preliminary hearing, held to establish even marginal evidence that a crime was committed and the defendants did it.

Storey County Judge Annette Daniels agreed and stopped the line of questioning.

"Any major legal issues will be decided in district court if the hearing produces enough evidence to bind the three over for trial," she said.

Freeman said during a break he was confident he still would be able to question Washoe County Sheriff's Detective Alan Artz about other potential suspects when he recalls him to the witness stand.

Artz said Wednesday that former Marine Lance Cpl. Scott Brendle confessed to shooting one of the horses in December.

Under cross-examination on Thursday, Artz acknowledged Brendle did not confess to killing that horse. Rather, he shot it twice and then witnessed its death - suggesting someone else finished it off.

Brendle, 22, ex-Lance Cpl. Darien Brock, 21, and Anthony Merlino, 20, a Reno construction worker, were arrested in January and accused of the slaughter of 34 horses east of Reno just after Christmas.

The three are charged with grand theft, grand larceny and killing another person's animals. In this case, the "person" owning the animals is the state of Nevada.

Brendle was based at Twentynine Palms outside Los Angeles and Brock at Camp Pendelton in San Diego when they were arrested. They have since been given the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge.

Brendle also admitted to spraying an already-dead horse with a fire extinguisher on the day authorities started discovering the horse carcasses.

Days later, Artz said Brendle admitted making a nighttime hike miles back into the canyon to retrieve beer bottles and shell casings. But he and the other two men deny any other involvement in the wild-horse slaughter that outraged animal rights activists across the country.

Their lawyers said the vast majority of the other horses killed were dead by the time the three former high school buddies arrived in Brendle's pickup truck.

Law officers responded to a call about the discovery of four dead horses the afternoon of Dec. 27. Over the next two days, they found a total of 34 horses that had been shot with high-powered rifles.

Artz said Brock and Brendle told the same story during initial questioning: that they came upon two dead horses in the area on the afternoon of Dec. 27.

Authorities say they bought a spotlight and ammunition at a Reno store that evening and returned that night to the canyon near Lockwood just a few miles south of Interstate 80.

After that, Brendle and the others drove to a nearby area, built a campfire and fired the same rifle several times, he said.

Two days later, Brendle read a newspaper article describing the death of horses in the area he and his friends had been. He set out on foot from Hidden Valley several miles to the south to "try to collect all the evidence they left," Artz said.

archive