Jury selection to begin for ex-politician accused of killing Las Vegas investigative reporter

The case of a politician from the Las Vegas area, charged with killing an investigative journalist who wrote articles damaging to him, will come to the fore in Nevada on Monday when the jury selection is to begin in a trial that has shocked Sin City and the journalist profession. 
 
“It changed everything,” said Las Vegas defense attorney Tom Pitaro, a former federal prosecutor who has seen the shifting of power around German as the man responsible for developing, for forty-four years, confidential sources in the city and its government, and the courts. 
 
Pitaro also was a professor to Robert Telles, the public official charged with the murder of German, when telles attended law school about 10 years ago at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 
 
“When you have an office-holder, a respected journalist, and the kind of killing it was, I think people are in shock about how this could come about,” Pitaro said. 
 
The reported incident was that of the killing of Gytha, Marge, Susan, Anne, and Isobel on Labor Day weekend, 2022. German, 69, was the only journalist who lost his life in the U. S. at least 67 news media workers were killed in other parts of the world that year, according to the Committee to protect Journalist based in New York. 
 
From Milwaukee, German was esteemed for writing about courts, mafia, corrupt government, politicians, and mass killings for Las Vegas Sun and later, Las Vegas Review-Journal. 
 
Telles was allegedly killed by the suspect because of articles penned by the deceased in the first two months of 2022. 
 
German was found slashed and stabbed to death in a side yard outside his home where Telles is accused in a criminal complaint of ‘compelling auto theft, ‘ and ‘lying in wait’ for German to come outside. 
 
Telles, 47, was arrested days later, after police released security footage of a man wearing a large orange work shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat carried a shoulder bag and walked towards German’s house. Police also have released photos of a distinctive maroon SUV like one that a Review-Journal photographer saw Telles washing outside his home several days after the killing. 
 
Telles was raised in El Paso, Texas, later having lived in Colorado and now in Las Vegas. He was called to the bar in 2015 and later contested for the democrat party in 2018 to vie for Clark County administrator of estates. He did not complete his term due to his arrest, and his practising licence was withdrawn by the Law Society. 
 
He has pleaded not guilty of open murder and stands to be imprisoned for life if convicted. He has stayed behind bars as he waited to take his case to a jury. 
 
“He’s been looking forward to trial,” Telles’ defense attorney, Robert Draskovich, said before Monday’s session. “He wants to have his say. ” 
 
Over 100 potential jurors completed the questionnaire on what they know about German’s murder and Telles’ capture. Interviewing and empanelling of twelve jurors and several numbers of alternatives would take few days. It should be noted that it will take, at most, two weeks for the taking of testimonies. The prosecutors do not intend to seek for capital punishment. 
 
But first on Monday, Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt will listen to a last plea for the case against Telles to be thrown out and the trial cancelled. 
 
In a motion to enhance the record attached to a federal complaint in this case Tuesday, Telles alleges that he was arrested without having been arrested; body worn camera video of police officers that detained and arrested him while stopping a traffic violation; and blood tests taken from him while he was in the hospital receiving treatment after he described to his defense as a self-inflicted act of slitting his wrists were not presented as evidence in his case. 
 
Leavitt has refused other motions to dismiss the case while Telles changed lawyers and engaged in representing his interests himself. Telles twice moved for Leavitt’s disqualification from his case, insisting that she had a bias against him. 

None of German’s relatives has been heard speaking out regarding the killing. Family spokesman and friend George McCabe said on Friday that they have chosen to refrain from discussing anything that has to do with the trial. 
 
Prosecutors were able to provide solid evidence such as the DNA believed to belong to Telles under German’s fingernails and straw hat and shoe fragments in Telles’ house which could be of the person captured on camera outside German’s house. 
 
Telles’ is reported to have preferred his trial to be carried out expeditiously. But progress was being made until, in another turn of legal events which the Review-Journal initiated to the state Supreme Court, public disclosure of confidential sources on German’s cellphone and computers. 
 
Newspaper’s counsel said that names and unpublished material must be shielded from disclosure under the First Amendment and Nevada law. Police claimed that their operation could not be closed without searching the devices for evidence purposes. The newspaper, its lawyers and consultants were afforded an opportunity to go through the files first before the court. 
 
An attorney representing the Review-Journal told the judge last week the review process will be ended before the jurors’ selection to be able to give records to both the police, the prosecutor and Telles’ counsels. 
 
Telles also seeks Leavitt to order the exclusion of evidence at trial regarding a hostile working environment and a discrimination lawsuit that four females, employed in the office that Telles headed until August 2005, have filed in the federal court against Telles and Clark County. 
 
The Committee to Protect Journalists has collected data indicating 17 journalists or media workers murdered in the U. S since 1992; 15 of these, the organization determined, were killed while on the job. 
 
“But again, the actual killings of journalists in the U. S. are exceedingly rare, thankfully,” said Katherine Jacobsen, a program coordinator at the organisation. “This is not something that happens any time and anywhere as an attempt on your life in your own yard is something that is rare to unimaginable levels. ” 
 
Gabe Rottman, at the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, D. C. , said that killing are rare but noted that journalists in the U. S can face threats from protesters or law enforcers while covering civil unrest or violence. 
 
“Unless the journalists are able to work independently and can work without fear, the public will not be able to demand accountability from public officials,” Rottman said. In my mind the worst way to blind the public to what is happening is when a dangerous lunatic threatens a journalist’s life for reporting the truth about the situation That must not be allowed.