Defense in Cosby Case Seeks More Evidence

Attorneys for the suspect in Ennis Cosby’s death complained in court Tuesday that the district attorney’s office has not been forthcoming with all potential evidence in the case, including a purported confession by an unidentified man in custody last month in Riverside.

The request that authorities turn over more documents came during a hearing in which Santa Monica Superior Court Judge David D. Perez rejected a request by several news organizations for access to court documents that have been routinely sealed by the court since Mikail “Michael” Markhasev was arrested March 12 in the slaying of entertainer Bill Cosby’s son.

As the 18-year-old defendant looked on, dressed in the blue jumpsuit of a county inmate, Deputy Alternate Public Defender Henry Hall told Perez that Markhasev’s defense team was unprepared to set a trial date because it is waiting for prosecutors to provide additional documents.

Although Markhasev’s attorneys have received some 7,000 pages of documents to date, Hall said, hundreds more have not been turned over by the prosecution. In addition, Hall said, authorities have not provided the addresses and telephone numbers for an estimated 50 witnesses who have been interviewed and could be called to the stand.

“The prosecution has this material,” Hall said.

The significance of not receiving the information, Hall said, was evident recently when the defense team learned Oct. 1 that Riverside authorities had been holding--on an undisclosed charge--a man who allegedly confessed earlier this year to killing Cosby. That confession, which the man allegedly made to a friend, came not long after Cosby’s body was discovered Jan. 16 lying next to his car in the Sepulveda Pass.

“If we had known where he was, we could have interviewed him,” Hall said of the man, who has since been released. “Now, he’s in the wind.”

After agreeing to hold another court hearing Nov. 18 before setting a trial date, Perez heard a request from several news organizations to unseal documents in the case.

Noting that numerous motions and other documents have already been ordered sealed by the court, media attorney Kelli Sager not only argued for specific justification in closing those to the public but asked that no additional documents be sealed unless the court determines that their release would prejudice the case.

Calling the existing approach “flatly unconstitutional,” Sager said neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys are entitled to close documents from public scrutiny as a matter of convenience to their cases or strategy. “These [documents] are supposed to be open unless there is justification for closing them, not the other way around,” said Sager, appearing on behalf of the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Reuters news agency.

Sager also challenged the notion that pretrial publicity could prejudice the potential jury pool, citing the open approach to evidence in several other high-profile cases including Watergate, the 1984 federal court case against auto maker John DeLorean and the murder trials of Charles Manson and O. J. Simpson. “Nobody I know has ever suggested . . . that Mr. Simpson did not get a fair trial,” Sager said.

But Perez rejected the motion, agreeing only that the court will provide a list of all the documents that to date have been sealed and also notify news organizations if future documents are to be sealed so they can challenge the action.

“DeLorean was a generation ago,” Perez said, arguing that the media’s interest in such cases is “tremendously greater today.”

The decision will be appealed.