Tuesday Voice

Milke

By Jim Rix

On March 14th 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction of Debra Jean Milke. Milke has been on Arizona’s Death Row for 22 years.
    The Crime (Wikipedia):

In August 1989, Debra Milke and her son Christopher Milke moved into an apartment with Jim Styers, a man she knew through her sister. On December 2, 1989, Styers took 4-year-old Christopher to a mall in Phoenix, Arizona. That afternoon he called Milke, who was doing laundry at the apartment, and told her that the boy had disappeared from the mall. Styers alerted mall security, while Milke dialed 911. A missing person investigation was launched. The next day Phoenix police arrested Roger Scott, a long-time friend of Styers. After more than fourteen hours of interrogation, Scott admitted that he knew where Christopher was and that the boy was dead. He directed the police to a desert area north of Phoenix, where Christopher’s body was discovered. Christopher had been shot three times in the head. According to the lead case detective, Armando Saldate, Jr., Scott claimed that Styers had committed the murder and that Milke had ‘wanted it done.’ However, Scott later refused to testify against Milke.
    Styers, who had helped in the initial search for Christopher, was arrested and interviewed by police after being implicated by Scott. Milke voluntarily went to the sheriff’s office, where she waited in a jail dispensary. Other Phoenix police detectives were told via radio not to speak to Debra. When Saldate arrived, he sent her accompanying acquaintance out of the room, and started the interrogation behind the closed door. He had neither set up a tape recorder, nor was any other witness present.
    Three days later he penned a narrative report that indicated Milke had instigated the murder of her son Christopher. Milke allegedly told Saldate that she wanted her son dead. The confession was not tape-recorded, signed by her, or witnessed by anyone.

Saldate claimed he destroyed his notes of the interview after he wrote his report.
    Milke has maintained her innocence from the beginning. She to this day insists that she never confessed to Saldate. Styers and Scott refused to testify against Milke, claiming that she had nothing to do with the murder. In short, Milke was convicted solely upon the testimony of Saldate. But there’s a problem. Saldate had a long record of misconduct and a reputation as a “lying cop.” In its decision, the Ninth Circuit Court cited nine cases in which Saldate was reprimanded: five times for lying under oath; four times for Fifth Amendment violations (Miranda); and cited another case for a Fourth Amendment violation (illegal arrest).

But the reason Milke’s conviction was overturned was not that Saldate is a lying cop with a history of misconduct. You see, it’s OK for a cop to lie to a jury so long as you tell the jury that he’s a lying cop. From the decision:

Milke requested all documents: concerning performance evaluations of Saldate; the credibility of Saldate; and investigations or disciplinary actions taken or contemplated against Saldate. The district court ordered the state to produce: Saldate’s personnel file; any Internal Affairs investigation(s) of Saldate; and any assessments of Saldate’s credibility maintained by the Phoenix Police Department. The state produced just two of Saldate’s annual reviews even though Saldate had held the job for 21 years before Milke’s trial. The undisclosed reports included one which detailed a 5-day suspension of Saldate for taking sexual liberties with a motorist he stopped and then lying to his supervisors about it. The state has never offered an explanation for its failure to produce the remaining reports.

Milke’s conviction was overturned because the state failed to disclose defense-requested material that would have seriously challenged Saldate’s credibility.
    This case is of particular interest to me because “the state” is none other than Noel Levy, the same prosecutor who twice tried and secured murder convictions of my cousin Ray Krone. For three years (1993-1996), I personally observed Levy stop at nothing to achieve a second conviction of my cousin, an obviously innocent man. Levy had persuasive junk science going for him in this case—a bite mark on the victim misinterpreted by his high-priced “hired gun” expert. But Levy also had a “lying cop” on his team. On the night that Ray was arrested, this detective interviewed a witness who saw the murderer enter and exit the crime scene. This witness told the detective unequivocally that it was not Ray because Ray had a beard at the time and the murderer was clean-shaven. Levy proceeded to obscure this information from the defense by having the detective lie about the time the witness observed the actual murderer, thus rendering the witness’s story “irrelevant.” Ray was released six years later when DNA evidence proved his innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. Other Levy shenanigans are well documented in my book about my cousin's case.
    But Debra Milke is not out of the woods (or jail) yet. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne says,

We will be appealing this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ms. Milke was found to have arranged the killing of her own son, a four-year-old toddler, because he was too much of a burden and interfering with her life. After dressing him up and telling him he was going to the mall to see Santa Claus, Milke was convicted of sending her young son off to be shot, execution style, in a desert wash. This is a horrible crime. The Ninth Circuit’s decision needs to be reversed, and justice for Christopher needs to be served.

[No surprise that Horne believes Saldate.]
    If the U.S. Supreme Court takes the case, Milke almost assuredly will be executed, as the U.S. Supreme Court almost always reverses the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Copyright © 2013 by Jim Rix

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