In a conference call yesterday, Baltimore Circuit Judge Kaye Allison told defense lawyers and prosecutors in the case that she will hear arguments on a state motion to “clarify potential conflict of interest between the defendants’ counsel” on Dec. 13, the date the trial was scheduled to begin.
Policarpio Espinoza is represented by Timothy M. Dixon, and Adan Canela is represented by James Rhodes. The lawyers share an office and a receptionist but are not part of the same firm.
Espinoza, 22, and Canela, 17, are accused of first-degree murder in the May 27 deaths of three of their young relatives. Ricardo Solis Quezada Jr. and Lucero Solis Quezada, both 9, and their male cousin, Alexis Espejo Quezada, 10, were strangled in their family’s Fallstaff apartment. One child was beheaded and the other two were partially decapitated.
Assistant State’s Attorneys Sharon R. Holback and Tony N. Garcia signed the motion Friday. In it, they noted that Policarpio Espinoza – whom they refer to as Policarpio Espinoza Perez – gave a statement to police that places Canela inside the crime scene about the time of the murders.
“The defense of one defendant may well be adverse to the other,” the prosecutors wrote.
Espinoza and Canela are illegal Mexican immigrants, and neither speaks English. Prosecutors said in their motion that the defendants have not been advised in open court, through an interpreter, of the possible conflict of interest between their lawyers.
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“The state has an obligation to protect the record for any future proceedings,” prosecutors said in a statement yesterday.
Prosecutors pointed out in their motion that the defense attorneys have worked together in past cases. The motion also indicates that an unnamed witness said both attorneys are being paid by Victor Espinoza, Canela’s father and Policarpio Espinoza’s brother.
Rhodes said neither he nor Dixon was retained by Victor Espinoza. Rhodes said his fee would be paid mainly by the public defender’s office. He called the state’s motion “wholly fabricated” and said yesterday it amounts to a “stall tactic.”
“Perhaps the taxpayers’ money, time and resources would be better utilized if the state were to expend those resources prosecuting the case rather than filing futile and frivolous motions,” Rhodes wrote in his response to the motion.
The two defense attorneys have worked in the same office near the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse on Calvert Street since Dixon left the city state’s attorney’s office about two years ago. Rhodes said they maintain separate files and staffs and do not divulge privileged information to one another.
Dixon could not be reached yesterday. In a trial that ended yesterday, Dixon represented a high school student accused in a quadruple shooting outside Randallstown High School in Baltimore County. Rhodes represented the brother of that student, who was called as a witness in the case.
Law professors said yesterday that sharing office space and working together in past cases do not amount to a conflict of interest.
“There would have to be something shown that the interest of a lawyer’s client would not be well served by that lawyer’s mixed or ambiguous relationship with another client,” said Douglas L. Colbert, a University of Maryland professor who has taught criminal law for 20 years.
He said prosecutors have a heavy burden in seeking to remove a defense lawyer, because a person accused of a crime is entitled to have his or her counsel of choice.
Robert J. Condolin, who has taught legal ethics at the University of Maryland Law School for about 25 years, said many defense attorneys “work side by side but can draw a clear line” to avoid conflicts.
But he also said a judge has an interest in providing a conflict-free trial and can rule that one or both attorneys should be removed if prosecutors show the “serious potential” for a conflict – even if there is no conflict at the time.
“The question will be,” he said, “how much risk is there of passing information that shouldn’t be shared?”