Posted on: August 21, 2024, 07:36h.
Last updated on: August 21, 2024, 07:45h.
On Wednesday, a very key defense witness in the murder trial of Robert Telles took the stand. Telles is the former Las Vegas public official accused of killing Jeff German, a veteran investigative journalist who wrote articles critical of Telles’ professional conduct, almost exactly two years ago.
That witness was Robert Telles himself.
“I am innocent and I am being framed,” Telles began his testimony toward the end of Day 8 of his trial.
But the courtroom got to witness something even rarer than a murder defendant testifying in his own defense.
Telles — who was an attorney but not a criminal one — provided narrative testimony, rather than the conventional tactic of answering questions from an attorney.
For nearly two hours, he painted a complex and meandering picture of how his job as the Clark County Public Administrator involved investigating corruption, and therefore earned him many enemies. One of them, he alleged, was a Las Vegas realty company that he named in court (but we won’t).
Telles outlined several alleged fraudulent transactions within that company and allegedly false claims it made against Telles. And he claimed that someone connected with the company left Jeff German a death threat voicemail in February 2022 to set him up for the murder.
Telles’ narrative testimony may imply an ethical problem faced by his attorneys. Specifically, under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, attorneys cannot elicit testimony from witnesses that they know to be false.
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Taking the stand in your own defense is almost never a good idea. It means you waive the right, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, to refuse to testify if your testimony could incriminate you. In addition, testifying hands the prosecution additional material to use to try and prove your guilt during cross-examination.
Indeed, outside the courtroom on Tuesday, Telles’ defense attorneys, Robert Draskovich and Michael Horvath, told reporters they advised their client against the strategy.
“He’s entitled to his defense,” Draskovich said. “This is the defense that he wants to present.”
The prosecution rested its case on Monday. It presented 28 witnesses and hundreds of pages of photos, police reports and video evidence.
Among its strongest evidence was the discovery of Telles’ DNA under German’s fingernails, video of a maroon SUV belonging to a member of Telles’ family parked near the murder scene, and hundreds of photos of German’s house found on Telles’ cellphone and computer.
Police also found a cut-up straw hat in Telles’ garbage that resembles the one worn by a man shown by surveillance footage entering and leaving the side of German’s house around the time he is believed to have been stabbed to death there.
Telles didn’t have time to address any of that evidence before court recessed for the day on Wednesday. He is expected to address those allegations as his narrative testimony continues on Thursday.
Telles has been held at the Clark County Detention Center since his arrest in September 2022.
