HUGO, Colo.—A judge said Tuesday he will review the way a district attorney’s office is being reimbursed by the state prison system to prosecute a death penalty case against two inmates charged with murdering another inmate.
Attorneys for one of the men have questioned whether it is legal for the Department of Corrections to pay District Attorney Carol Chambers’ office to prosecute their client.
They are seeking to have her removed from the case and replaced by a special prosecutor, citing the funding issue and alleged conflicts of interest.
Chambers has said a state law allows the Department of Corrections to reimburse her office to prosecute prison crimes.
Alejandro Perez, 30, and David Bueno, 44, are charged with first-degree murder in the 2004 death of Jeffrey Heird at the Limon Correctional Facility.
Prosecutors say Heird was stabbed 29 times after he was labeled a snitch and accused of not warning other inmates that a drug bust was coming.
Chambers announced in 2006 she would seek the death penalty for both men.
Perez’s attorneys are challenging the way Chambers’ office is being paid.
“Ultimately, the funding issue has to do with the independence of the prosecutor,” said Judy Lucero, one Perez’s lawyers. “We need these documents to show the claims we are making are not frivolous.”
Chambers said the issue is irrelevant and accused defense attorneys of seeking publicity.
“It is a fishing expedition,” Chambers told District Judge Stanley A. Brinkley. “It is something to take to the press.”
Brinkley ordered Chambers to disclose by Friday how her office has billed the Department of Corrections. Brinkley said he would review the documents before deciding whether defense attorneys should see them.
Bueno’s trial is under way. Perez will be tried later.
Bueno’s attorneys argue a white supremacist gang that Heird belonged to was responsible for his killing.
Heird had been convicted in Utah for the 1991 murder of a gas station attendant he had kidnapped in Cortez, Colo.
Perez’s attorneys also allege two lawyers with ties to the prosecution have conflicts of interest.
One, Dan Edwards, a deputy prosecutor in Chambers’ 18th Judicial District office, once represented Perez in a second-degree murder case that got him sent to prison.
“To allow an attorney to engage in the calculated killing of a former client shocks the conscience of a civilized society,” Perez’s attorneys wrote in a court motion.
Edwards has been ordered off the Perez case but is currently working on the Bueno trial.
The other attorney, Bob Watson, a former deputy prosecutor in Chambers’ district, once represented an inmate who is a prosecution witness in the Heird slaying.
Watson is now the district attorney for the 13th Judicial District and is not directly involved in the Heird case.
