Rudy Sablan’s defense attorney tried to plant doubt in the minds of a federal jury about an informant who testified he saw Sablan strangling a cellmate with a pair of headphone cords.
Defense lawyer Donald Knight called inmate Arthur Peck a habitual liar and said he only testified against Sablan in order to get out of jail and into a witness protection program where Peck gets $25,000 a year and free medical care for his HIV.
“That’s reason enough to find Rudy Sablan not guilty because the only person who can tie him to this crime is a liar,” Knight told the jury. “You can’t convict on this type of evidence.”
On rebuttal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda Taylor said Peck — a man with past convictions for child rape and bank robbery — was not on trial and conceded to the jury that he is not a perfect witness.
“Crimes conceived in hell do not have angels as witnesses,” she said.
The closing arguments took place Tuesday in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Wiley Y. Daniel. Sablan is charged with the murder of cellmate Joey Estrella on Oct. 10, 1999, in the Special Housing Unit at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence.
He faces the possibility of the death penalty if jurors find him guilty of first-degree murder.
William Sablan, a distant cousin who also shared the cell, was convicted last year of killing Estrella, but a lone juror voted against the death penalty in his case and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Estrella was strangled after a night of drinking prison-made alcohol and fighting. After he was rendered unconscious, Estrella’s throat was cut and he was disemboweled.
Prison guards testified both William and Rudy Sablan pulled Estrella’s organs out of his abdomen and held them up in celebration of the killing.
A videotape taken shortly after the killing shows Rudy Sablan repeatedly giving William Sablan commands about getting rid of a razor blade and telling him to keep his mouth shut.
Prosecutors contend Rudy Sablan was trying to control the situation to keep William Sablan from implicating him.
Prosecutor Phillip Brimmer told the jury that Rudy Sablan kept flushing the toilet and washing his hands in the sink so that if Estrella happened to cry out, nobody would hear it.
“He spent this whole trial trying to wash his hands of this terrible murder,” Brimmer said. “No matter how hard he tries to wash his hands, the bloodstains remain.”
Defense lawyers told the jury that Rudy Sablan was also a victim of what had occurred in the cell.
Rudy Sablan had lived in the cell with Estrella for nearly four months without incident and considered him a friend, Knight said. The killing occurred only three days after William Sablan was placed in the same cell with the two men.
But Taylor told jurors not to believe that Rudy Sablan cared about his cellmate.
“This is just plain cold-blooded,” she said. “Cold-blooded without comprehension.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
