New defense launches two-pronged approach

Prosecutors have fumed in court documents that claims to try to get Jeremy Strohmeyer a new trial in the rape and murder of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson are so bogus that his attorneys should be forced to pay the state's legal bills.

Strohmeyer's newly hired New York defense attorneys have taken a two-pronged approach in seeking to have set aside the guilty plea of the 21-year-old killer, even though a new trial would mean facing the possibility of a death sentence.

The defense has alleged that the victim's father, Leroy Iverson, bumped into Strohmeyer's buddy David Cash coming out of the Primm casino women's restroom just before the Los Angeles man entered to find his daughter's lifeless body.

The defense also contends that Strohmeyer's high-profile Los Angeles attorney Leslie Abramson and Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright coerced and manipulated the defendant into pleading guilty on Sept. 8, 1998, and accepting a life prison sentence with no chance for parole.

But after serving nearly a year and a half in a protective custody cell at the state's maximum security prison in Ely -- with nothing in his future except about 50 years of the same -- Strohmeyer decided he would rather take his chances with a jury.

In documents filed Friday, District Attorney Stewart Bell stated the claim of Cash's involvement "illustrates, at best, a gross lack of preparation and understanding of the facts and evidence in this case and, at worst, a blatant attempt to mislead the court."

The defense claims that Cash had bumped into Leroy Iverson outside the restroom on May 25, 1997, and Iverson told police of the incident, but police and prosecutors never relayed that to Strohmeyer's trial attorneys as is required by law.

Bell said the information never existed.

Strohmeyer has stated in a court affidavit that he would have gone to trial had he known of Iverson's story and let a jury decide if the state could prove its case.

Bell chastised the New York lawyers for failing to review surveillance videotapes from the Primm Valley hotel-casino that show that Cash and Strohmeyer were gone from the arcade and restroom area for at least 40 minutes before Iverson ever arrived.

Before that, videotapes showed that Strohmeyer spent nearly 25 minutes in the restroom with Sherrice Iverson while Cash was inside less than two minutes. Cash later told police he witnessed the beginnings of the assault and told Strohmeyer to stop, but was ignored.

Leroy Iverson, in fact, did see two young men in the area about the time the slaying was discovered -- two younger teens from Nipton, Calif. -- but he pointed them out to police and they were cleared of any involvement in the slaying.

District Judge Joseph Bonaventure is being asked by Strohmeyer's lawyers to "correct a manifest injustice." Argument is set for Feb. 1, when the judge will determine if a full hearing with testimony is warranted.

"Justice has been served in that the man who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and strangled to death Sherrice Iverson has been held accountable," Bell wrote. "The evidence of the defendant's guilt is overwhelming."

In addition to videotape evidence, Strohmeyer confessed to friends and police that he was the killer. His DNA was found on a cigarette butt in the restroom where the girl's body was found propped on a toilet seat.

"The alleged newly discovered evidence is not evidence at all, just gibberish," Bell continued in the court documents. "The assertion that there was a manifest injustice is simply stacking wishes upon hopes upon dreams with no foundation whatsoever."

He has asked Bonaventure to order that the New York lawyers "be financially sanctioned for the state having to respond to these absolutely ridiculous and unfounded assertions."

In response to the defense contention that Strohmeyer was bullied into taking a plea bargain, the prosecution presented the court with Wright's private notes detailing the defense's handling of the case.

The notes are required to be kept in potential death penalty cases for use in this type of situation. While the documents are the defense's work product and not revealed to the state before the conclusion of the case, they are unsealed when a defendant files an appeal claiming ineffectiveness or wrongdoing by the attorneys.

In his notes, Wright wrote that during a discussion four days before pleading guilty, Strohmeyer said "he doesn't want to die or risk dying."

The plea deal came just after a jury was selected -- one that included three black jurors when the victim was black and the defendant white.

Wright and Abramson, according to his new lawyers, incorrectly told Strohmeyer that he had few appeal issues should he be convicted at a trial and that the lightest sentence would put him in prison for life.

Wright wrote that he told Strohmeyer he is "not comfortable we can prevent the death penalty."

The veteran Las Vegas attorney noted that information would surface at a trial showing that Strohmeyer browsed child pornography sites on the Internet, referred to Sherrice Iverson in statements as his "little lover," and justified the killing as "one less nigger."

Wright told Strohmeyer and his family that if the jury were hung on the issue of guilt, the case would go to a three-judge panel, and he believed "without hesitation" such a panel would hand down the death penalty.

"They are popularly elected judges and can't go wrong by executing," Wright wrote that he told Strohmeyer.

Wright's notes indicate there was some disagreement between himself and Abramson over the possibility of a plea bargain and believed there were some issues to present to a jury.

But even she said she believed the best result from the jury -- which she described as "the worst California jury" -- would have been a hung jury.

The notes indicate that Abramson didn't push Strohmeyer to the plea bargain, although she agreed that the death penalty loomed as a possibility.

In fact, Wright wrote that Abramson "makes it clear to Strohmeyer that it is his decision."

Abramson said, "I'm not advising or advocating what you do," the notes state, adding that Wright told the defendant he was advocating the plea bargain because "I'm opposed to the death penalty and I never see you getting out of prison. Under your best case, you're in prison the rest of your life."

The notes indicate that part of Strohmeyer's reason for considering a plea bargain was that wanted to "get an education and make a difference ... tell his story how a good person did a horrible thing, so Sherrice didn't die in vain."

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