Indictment in Cosby Slaying to Remain Sealed

A Los Angeles County Grand Jury indictment against the alleged slayer of Ennis Cosby will remain sealed for another three weeks, a Superior Court judge decided Friday.

The Thursday indictment against Mikail “Michael” Markhasev, 18, is believed to include the same charges--murder and attempted robbery--already leveled by the district attorney’s office.

But in a brief court hearing Friday, Markhasev’s attorneys Charles Lindner, Dale Rubin and Darren Kavinoky said that the unexpected indictment forced them to check with the defendant’s family to see if it could still afford the representation of the three attorneys.

Superior Court Judge John Reid ruled that the indictment would remain sealed until it was confirmed that the defense attorneys would remain on the case as attorneys of record.

The trio had signed on for the pretrial hearing, but the indictment means that the case will move directly to trial.

Lindner said that the family as well as “members of the Russian and Ukrainian community” whom he would not identify were paying for Markhasev’s defense.

Lindner described Markhasev’s mind-set as “good but agitated. . . . We have kept his spirits up. We’re on the Internet each day getting new jokes for him.”

The attorneys also criticized the district attorney’s office, saying that prosecutors have behaved “unconstitutionally” in not disclosing that an eyewitness was unable to recognize their client last month during a police lineup.

Lindner also said prosecutors have refused to give the defense any discovery documents, including police reports and ballistics tests.

“We’re going through extraordinary hide-the-ball procedures by prosecutors,” he said.

While noting Friday that it had another week to meet a deadline for turning over additional documents, the district attorney’s office did provide what it described as an inch-thick stack of information about the case to the defense team.

But late in the day, Rubin said that even those documents represented only part of the purported evidence being compiled by the district attorney’s office. “They didn’t provide us with everything,” Rubin said, adding that pages of documents were missing.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney responded that additional information will be turned over to defense attorneys “as it becomes available.”

Meantime, the secret indictment against Markhasev accelerated the process leading to a trial on charges that he shot and killed the 27-year-old son of entertainer Bill Cosby on Jan. 16. The body of the younger Cosby was found in the Sepulveda Pass alongside his Mercedes-Benz.

Because the grand jury proceedings preclude a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court, Markhasev is now slated to be arraigned in Superior Court on May 1. Rubin said the trial could start as early as July.

“What this [indictment] means is that we are much closer to a trial without having any more information about the crime” and evidence, Rubin said.