By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Lewis County Superior Court Judge Richard Brosey made clear he wants to hold a hearing on convicted triple murderer John Allen Booth Jr.’s allegations of eavesdropping by the state on Lewis County Jail inmates and wants his attorneys to have the benefit of all the materials they are seeking to present the issue.
“I want to go through the entire process because when we do have a hearing, I want all the information available,” Brosey said in court yesterday.
John A. Booth Jr.
Court assigned defense attorney Erik Kupka and his office partner David Mistashkin were in Lewis County Superior Court yesterday afternoon asking for an order that prosecutors turn over certain documents.
Kupka called the issue a constitutional matter, the remedy for which could be a new trial.
Booth is serving a life sentence following his December 2011 conviction in the shooting deaths the year before of David West Sr., 52; his son David “D.J.” West Jr., 16; and 50-year-old Tony Williams of Randle. West Sr.’s live-in girlfriend Denise Salts was shot in the face but survived. Prosecutors said the slayings in the Onalaska-Salkum area home came about because Booth and his former cell mate were “taxing” West Sr. on behalf of Lewis County drug dealer Robbie Russell.
Booth denies he shot them. Booth didn’t attend yesterday’s hearing.
The proceedings relate to Booth’s motion to vacate his judgement and sentence which he filed late last year from Walla Walla State Penitentiary. It alleges governmental misconduct and the state’s infringement of his right to counsel.
His main contention is law enforcement officers listened from outside the jail’s row of visiting rooms while he consulted with his attorneys, rooms in which people almost had to yell back and forth to be heard through the transparent partitions.
Lewis County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher asked the court yesterday to rule against the pair of defense attorneys.
“In any stretch of the imagination, there is no legal authority for what they request,” Meagher said.
Brosey agreed the information they sought was not possessed by prosecutors, but by the jail, and advised them to continue pursuing the documents through public records requests. Kupka and Mistashkin said they’ve been doing that, but the pages have ben heavily redacted.
Kupka was appointed by Brosey in late January to represent Booth on his self-filed motion. Brosey presided over the Dec. 2011 trial.
Kupka and Mistashkin told the judge they still have not been able to get a hold of copies of material from the case from the lawyer who represented Booth during his trial. Meagher offered to share with them everything he turned over to the previous attorney.
Brosey noted more than once it was troubling to him the defense attorney, Roger Hunko, never raised the privacy issue as a problem during the trial.
“I don’t think there’s anything in the record that occurred,” he said.
The attorneys, who work in Grays Harbor County, have an appointment set to interview Booth in Walla Walla on Sept. 26.
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For background, read “Ear hustling”: Convicted murderer John Booth tells judge about problems at Lewis County Jail” from Friday July 5, 2013, here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
@ twisted…. all these lives were wasted way before this all happened…. quit making the drug dealers out to be saints… its all a sad situation… just wait till the truth comes out… only the people involved know the truth… so spend that blood money as fast as you can… because they will be coming for it soon…..
Just because you can I respect your right to your opinion but tweakers or not lives were lost family destroyed if nothing else have a little respect for that
keeping it real,keeping it real………..
@middleman….. well you were there in the courtroom when he said it so you also know he was baited with all kinds of leading questions and the lies of the tweekers on the stands… this really shows how bias you and your sirens page is.. have you even thought of running for an office in the lewis county courts… Im sure you would fit right in…..
Good assessment of the situation, Guilty Bystander. I hate to think that by trying to be sly, the court’s attorneys end up freeing someone like booth.
Freebigsix…. you might want to stop off at the Human Response Network to find out why you are attracted to “bad boys” who have little or no humanity. Perhaps you think you can change them, but I assure you, some evil is intractable.
if ever there was a more clearcut case for the death penalty i’ve never seen it lewis county didnt want to spend the million dollars it cost to pursue it i admit the grownup’s knew what they were dealing with but the innocent 14 year old kid didn’t have to die especially the way it went down
i think i recall booth saying when asked if he shot and killed them he said ya and if i had a gun right now i’d shoot you too
the jury was poisoned by a neighbor of the victims… the testimony presented was a bunch of lies from the tweekers involved. the lewis county courts are well known for misleading documents and fabricated evidence… and the bottom line is somebody wiped out a whole den of drug addicts… I’m sorry to say it but if this perfect child you inbreeds keep talking about was all you retards profess, he wouldn’t have been living in such a fu@#ed up environment… you people keep acting like were talking about upstanding citizens… it is well known that these people were selling meth to the whole area, ruining everybody’s life’s that they touched… but then hey, what can be expected from a bunch of tweekers… you freaks should just take those millions you got paid and go away to some treatment facility and get your lives back, then maybe you can see the truth…
And what evidence is your decision based on that gives him such an unshakable alibi?
No name calling, just looking to see how your coming up with your position.
that’s because he didn’t do it,you stupid in-breed.you go on believing what you want and i’ll know what i know to be true.
Says the person who’s on-line handle professes a desire to put a child killer back in our community….
your so fu@#*!g stupid Free Air
The Jury through the presentation of testimony and evidence disagrees with you.
Oh, and by the way, so does John. Your forgetting the recorded conversation in the jail where he says he knew he’s in trouble when they found the gun he used, and his flight to Spokane to escape.
From what I read, the cops did a pretty good job of catching up with him and putting together a case the prosecutors could take to court.
I guess outside of that, there is always the chance it could have been done by space aliens who then extracted John’s DNA and planted it on items of evidence.
The law has the right person behind bars all right. Tossing complex conspiracy theories into the air about how John could have been framed by the efforts of four or five law enforcement agencies only aligns you with a child killer, not an innocent man.
at guilty bystander…. I applaud your view on a persons rights… but I have to say this case has been a train-wreck since the beginning…. filled with lies and piss poor police work… thats why he is uncooperative….. John Booth has a long uphill battle for his day in court, and because lewis county is so crooked its going to cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to see the truth…. but then thats nothing compared to what they paid the tweekers…
at freeair… you make me sick and I wish you would just go find another bag of meth and crawl in a closet and close the door…. end of story…. John Booth didnt kill anybody regardless if he was there or not…
Bravo, Guilty Bystander. Someone standing up for due process and the rights laid out in our CONSTITUTION always cheers me up.
I’m wondering if he’s still smiling in State Prison.
Child killers have it tougher there than back at the local jail.
This is a legitimate appeal. Not even Charles Manson’s conversations should be listened to by law enforcement personnel. There is a right to privacy even for the worst among us, and the fact that these documents have been heavily redacted is a concern.
My own take (from a distance) is that Booth’s conviction was also legit, but this is the sort of technicality that can get convictions overturned if proven. The burden of proof is on Kupka and Mistashkin, but they do deserve access to unredacted copies of the documents they seek. Curious that Hunko has been uncooperative…I wonder what that’s about?