Las Vegas Review-Journal

By Caren Benjamin

June 101998

A man who has been on death row for near­ly 10 years entered a guilty plea Tuesday that will get him out of prison by Dec. 1 of next year. As part of a plea agree­ment Victor Jimenez promised not to sue those respon­si­ble for putting him behind bars for the September 1987 stab­bing deaths of two men in a North Las Vegas bar. Jimenez, 31, was grant­ed a new tri­al after the Nevada Supreme Court found police failed to dis­close evi­dence point­ing to oth­er sus­pects and gave tes­ti­mo­ny that was at best inac­cu­rate and at worst per­jury.” Jimenez entered a spe­cial type of guilty plea Tuesday to two counts of sec­ond-degree mur­der that required him to admit only that pros­e­cu­tors could prove a case against him. And even that deal he took with extreme reluc­tance and on the advice of his lawyers, Laura FitzSimmons and JoNell Thomas. It was the only way I could guar­an­tee his free­dom. This is noth­ing about the search for the truth,” FitzSimmons said. Special Prosecutor Robert Langford, appoint­ed to the case because the dis­trict attor­ney’s office had a con­flict of inter­est, said he offered the deal because he was con­cerned that the pas­sage of time could make the case impos­si­ble to pros­e­cute again. Justice in my mind is not tak­ing this back to a jury with insuf­fi­cient or weak evidence,“Langford said. This man was guilty of this crime. This makes him account­able and guar­an­tees he’ll stay in prison. Maybe the 18 months ism only a token, but at least he’s got to serve more prison time.”

On the night of the mur­ders Jimenez broke into a truck parked out­side Gabe’s Bar on Las Vegas Boulevard North, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. He stole a tool box that con­tained, among oth­er items, a car­pet knife and a dag­ger, accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny at his trial.

The next morn­ing police found the bod­ies of 35-year-old bar­tender John Mynheir and 74-year-old patron Antonio Velasquez inside the bar. Theywere stabbed numer­ous times and there were no weapons found at the scene. The bar had been robbed of $330 in slot and juke­box money.

Jimenez was inter­ro­gat­ed by North Las Vegas police offi­cers Thomas Harry and Bruce Scroggins. No records were made of that inter­ro­ga­tion, but at tri­al the offi­cers tes­ti­fied that Jimenez had made incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments. And an expert at tri­al sug­gest­ed the knife wounds could have been caused by a car­pet knife or a dag­ger. Also, a for­mer cell­mate tes­ti­fied that he over­heard Jimenez con­fess­ing to the stab­bings in a tele­phone call. The infor­mant said he came for­ward out of the good­ness of his heart. Scroggins backed that sto­ry up, claim­ing the pris­on­er got noth­ing in return for his testimony.

The jury in his first tri­al in late 1987 could not reach a ver­dict. A sec­ond jury con­vict­ed him and sen­tenced him to death. The Supreme Court over­turned the sen­tence and ordered a new penal­ty hear­ing on the grounds that the state had made a mis­take in sug­gest­ing some of the rea­sons Jimenez could be exe­cut­ed. A new jury again sen­tenced him to death.

In May 1996 a unan­i­mous court grant­ed Jimenez a new tri­al. Their deci­sion rest­ed in part on evi­dence the infor­mant had been giv­en con­sid­er­a­tion for his tes­ti­mo­ny. Scroggins admit­ted at a lat­er court hear­ing that he helped have some charges against the man dropped once he tes­ti­fied against Jimenez. Scroggins also admit­ted that the man had worked with North Las Vegas police in the same capac­i­ty sev­er­al times in the past. Justices also found Jimenez had been prej­u­diced by the fact defense attor­neys were not giv­en evi­dence police had from a man who report­ed a con­ver­sa­tion he heard at a bar near Gabe’s. The wit­ness told police he heard two men dis­cussing killing peo­ple at a bar, one of whom dis­played a knife.

According to court doc­u­ments, the wit­ness had also iden­ti­fied those two men from police pho­tos of sus­pects in anoth­er bar rob­bery that occurred about the same time. After Jimenez’s con­vic­tion, a police­of­fi­cer tes­ti­fied he gave reports about those two men and the wit­ness to Harry to be includ­ed in the file. The Supreme Court found that Harry nev­er put those reports in the file and defense attor­neys were unaware of their exis­tence at tri­al. What this case shows to me is when a basi­cal­ly lazy … police offi­cer decides to close a case out the easy way … what you wind up hav­ing is incred­i­ble expense to the pub­lic, 10 years on death row for a young man with no oth­er crim­i­nal record and the peo­ple who did this mur­der out walk­ing around,” FitzSimmons said Tuesday. Harry, who has retired from the police force, was acquit­ted in 1995 on unre­lat­ed charges he ran drugs out of a bar he owned. Jimenez will be sen­tenced July 10 by District Judge John McGroarty.