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Attorney Pete Connick says he needs more time. A lawyer for the Yakima Herald-Republic says Connick is stonewalling.
That's the short version of the Herald-Republic's long-running battle to unseal court records in a double-murder case that cost taxpayers more than $2 million in court-appointed attorneys' fees and other defense spending.
Connick is a Seattle lawyer who represented Mario "Gato" Mendez, one of two men convicted in a 2005 drug ripoff that ended in the shooting deaths of 21-year-old Ricky Causor and his 3-year-old daughter, Mya.
In August, Yakima County Superior Court Judge James Lust ordered the billings released, but gave Connick until Sept. 26 to edit out privileged attorney work product from client's file. But on Thursday, Connick belatedly asked the court for a new deadline of Nov. 12.
"There's over 1,300 pages" in the file, he said in an interview with the Herald-Republic. "I didn't know there was going to be 1,300 pages of stuff. It's actually not fair."
Sarah Wixson, a lawyer for the newspaper, had a different take on it. She accused Connick of dragging his feet to buy time while he prepares an appeal of Lust's order.
"He's trying to perfect his appeal before he has to turn over the records so he doesn't have to turn them over at all," she said.
Wixson said Connick could face court sanctions for failing to meet the deadline.
The dispute over the Mendez file is half of a two-front war being fought by the Herald-Republic, which has been struggling to unseal court records in the case for months.
Herald-Republic Pub-lisher Mike Shepard said the dispute has cost the news-
paper more than $30,000 in legal fees at a time of financial turmoil in the newspaper industry caused by the accelerating loss of advertising revenue to the Internet and the recent economic downturn.
Nevertheless, he said the role of watchdog is one the paper takes seriously. Defense spending in the case cost taxpayers more than $2 million, and the public has a right to a full accounting, he said.
"It would be better for us financially to let these lawyers and the courts keep these records secret," Shepard said, "but I don't think that's what is best for the citizens of the Yakima Valley or the state."
The high-octane defense spending in the case exposed shortcomings in the way death penalty cases are handled in Washington. Much of the defense spending would have been unnecessary had the possibility of the death penalty not been in play.
Also under seal is the file of co-defendant Jose "Junior" Sanchez, who was convicted by a jury in November of aggravated first-degree murder for his role in the attack and is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.
The death penalty was initially on the table in Sanchez's case, and his first set of lawyers racked up nearly $1 million in defense costs before they were dismissed for unethical behavior.
By the time the trial was over, the final tab came to just over $1.5 million. Much of that cost was unnecessary, as prosecutors ultimately rejected the death penalty before trial.
The bill for Mendez's defense, meanwhile, topped $500,000. Mendez pleaded guilty to a lesser murder charge before the Sanchez trial and was given a 30-year sentence for his testimony. Sanchez was sentenced automatically to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Connick said it isn't his fault that he missed the deadline to edit the Mendez file because he didn't get the file from the court until just two days before the Sept. 26 deadline.
Asked what he's been doing for the past two weeks, he said he was "in the process" of going to trial on an unrelated case in Seattle and that he can't edit the file without assistance from his co-counsel in the Mendez case, Mary Kay High of Tacoma.
"My problem is I have to get together with" her, he said.
As a result, he said he needs until Nov. 12 to edit the file. A hearing on his request has been set for Oct. 24 before Lust.
For now it appears that Connick has not been billing the county to fight Lust's unsealing order. County officials said he has not submitted any billings for months.
* Chris Bristol can be reached at 577-7748 or cbristol@yakimaherald.com.
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