Lawyer Assails Police Handling of Slaying Suspect

The attorney for Jeremy Joseph Strohmeyer, the teenager charged with killing 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, charged Wednesday that Las Vegas authorities coerced an alleged confession from her client and have engaged in a “deceitful” campaign to win a conviction before a trial.

Lashing out at the tactics used by law enforcement officials and at the quality of their evidence, defense lawyer Leslie Abramson accused Las Vegas police of eliciting statements from Strohmeyer by refusing to allow the 18-year-old legal counsel while detectives interrogated him at length about the murder.

The interrogation, she said, continued even while Strohmeyer was having his stomach pumped at Long Beach Community Medical Center after swallowing pills before his arrest.

Further, defense lawyers maintained, police deliberately attempted to keep Strohmeyer from speaking with counsel by whisking him out of the hospital while a family attorney waited there for the teenager’s release.

Abramson’s statements point toward a potentially key issue in the case: whether Strohmeyer’s statements--described by Las Vegas detectives as a confession to charges of murder and sexual assault--will be admitted into evidence in a trial. An attempt to keep Strohmeyer’s statements out of evidence is expected to be an important strategy for the defense.

On Tuesday, the Long Beach high school senior made his first court appearance in Los Angeles on a fugitive murder warrant issued in Nevada. In support of that warrant, Las Vegas authorities filed an affidavit outlining what they described as Strohmeyer’s confession to the May 25 murder.

But Abramson on Wednesday sharply criticized authorities for the contents of the affidavit, contending that they went far beyond the required information in an effort to sway the opinion of the public--potential jurors--and to paint the youth as a killer.

“What is particularly . . . deceitful of the Nevada authorities is putting in a court document information that is utterly unnecessary for the issuance of a warrant,” Abramson said. “What they are obviously doing is subverting the rules . . . about prosecutors not disseminating this kind of information.”

‘You don’t have to play dirty if you’ve got the goods,” she added.

Some hours after Abramson made her comments, a Nevada judge granted her request for a gag order. It bars defense lawyers, prosecutors and police from discussing the case with the press.

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According to Abramson, the affidavit includes alleged evidence of a confession that Abramson said was coerced by detectives during more than four hours of interviews with Strohmeyer.

“My information is that it was a coerced confession because they refused to let his lawyer in” during interviews, Abramson said, referring to Strohmeyer’s previous counsel, Doug Otto.

“His attorney was trying to get in there . . . as [Strohmeyer’s] stomach is being pumped and he has a tube down his throat . . . and [police] don’t allow the attorney to be present,” she said.

Over an undetermined number of hours, she added, the detectives were “intimidating and interrogating” Strohmeyer in an effort to elicit a confession consistent with facts in the case. “And then when they think he’s got it [memorized] they turn on the tape recorder,” she said.

“I would categorically deny that anything contained in any purported confession by him can be relied upon because the genesis of all this is the cops,” Abramson said.

Las Vegas homicide Lt. Wayne Petersen scoffed at Abramson’s charges.

“Her comment is typical of a defense attorney,” he said. “We don’t coerce confessions from anyone.”

Petersen insisted that Strohmeyer was advised of his Miranda rights and never asked for an attorney when he was interrogated by detectives.

A Long Beach homicide investigator, who declined to be identified, also disputed Abramson’s account.

Strohmeyer, the investigator said, “began making statements at the hospital. He was not being interrogated.”

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Otto, for his part, backed Abramson’s account, saying that the night Strohmeyer was arrested, his mother called Otto, a Long Beach attorney, to represent her son. Otto first went to the hospital, then after learning that Strohmeyer had been moved to police headquarters, waited there from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. He said he made repeated pleas to see Strohmeyer but was not permitted to do so.

“There was a concerted conspiracy to deny me access to my client,” Otto said.

Abramson also contended that authorities had misrepresented other aspects of the case.

First, she said, no evidence was recovered from Strohmeyer’s computer that he was collecting child pornography from the Internet.

“This kiddie porn thing is nonsense,” Abramson said, adding that law enforcement officials have seized the computer and have found “no such thing” in its files.

And, Abramson said, the level of animus police have toward Strohmeyer was reflected in one detective’s suggestion that the youth’s purported suicide attempt may have been a hoax.

“That is bull. . . .,” Abramson said. “He left a note . . . he left a suicide note.”

Investigators have said some of Strohmeyer’s classmates told them that the Woodrow Wilson High School senior was interested in child pornography, and that he used his computer to download it.

Petersen acknowledged that his detectives have uncovered no evidence linking Strohmeyer to child pornography. But he noted that a Long Beach police computer crimes specialist has not finished examining files in a computer hard drive and disks seized from Strohmeyer’s home.

As for the suicide try, police maintain that although Strohmeyer left a note, it was not about a suicide.

Investigators arrested Strohmeyer as he left his house through a side door and started walking down the street. Strohmeyer’s mother had just arrived home and told police she found a note her son had written to her explaining that he had taken some pills, investigators said.

Petersen said he had not personally read it, but said, “It was not a suicide note. It was a note to his mother.”