138 - The Murder of Daniel Mendoza - Part 8 - Transcript

Shaun For nearly thirty years. Ron Mortensen said the jury never heard the full story about Daniel Mendoza's murder. He said Christopher Brady had been protected by the police department, and that the jury had been kept from the truth and that he was convicted as a scapegoat for failures inside Metro.

John Then, after decades of appeals, a federal court finally reopened the case. But what came next was not the ending Mortensen wanted, and it was not the closure that Daniel's family deserved.

Shaun Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors. A Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on missing persons, unsolved cases, and the number one cause of homicide in the Las Vegas area. Domestic violence. I'm your host, Sean.

John And I'm your co-host, John.

Shaun This is the final episode of our eight part series on the murder of Daniel Mendoza. Over the past two months, we have looked at the culture of Las Vegas in the nineteen nineties and how on December twenty eight, nineteen ninety six, two off duty police officers drove into a low income neighborhood and fired a gun at a group of young people who were hanging out in front of their small apartment complex. Daniel Mendoza, just twenty one years old, died in front of his home. There was no evidence or testimony from either officer that the friends had done anything to provoke them. They weren't armed. They were just hanging out and celebrating during the holiday season. What followed was a trial that gripped Las Vegas, as each officer blamed the other for the murder. To go back and hear everything from the beginning. Visit since podcast one twenty nine or. We have put all the episodes together in a Spotify playlist for you at podcast slash Daniel Mendoza.

John Last week, we talked about the legal arguments that kept Mortensen's case alive for nearly thirty years. Mortensen repeatedly argued that the jury had not heard the full story about Christopher Brady, about the evidence and about the credibility issues that surrounded the state's key witness. Some of these arguments were rejected over and over again, but they didn't disappear because neither Mortensen's nor Brady's role in Daniel's death was ever fully resolved in a way that satisfied anyone not Daniel's family, Mortenson's supporters, Metro, or the many Las Vegas residents watching the case from the outside. And then, in March of twenty twenty five, one of those arguments finally broke through. U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson ruled that Mortenson was entitled to a new trial because the court found serious constitutional problems in the original trial. One issue involved the jury instructions used in nineteen ninety seven, which didn't properly separate intent from the legal requirement of deliberation in a first degree murder case. Another involved Mark Barry, the metro officer who later said that Brady had talked before Daniel's murder about doing a drive by, which was testimony the jury never heard. That ruling reopened the case almost thirty years after Daniel was killed, forcing state prosecutors to consider what justice could look like for a murder case from nineteen ninety six.

Shaun By twenty twenty five, almost thirty years had passed. Witnesses were older. Memories had faded. Some people may have been difficult to find and physical evidence that had mattered so much during the original trial, including Brady's truck, could not simply be located or ever recreated in the same way. There were also questions about who would even testify if the case went back to trial. Would Christopher Brady take the stand again? Would Ron Mortensen, would the eye witnesses who had testified in nineteen ninety seven still be available? And if they were, how much would they remember after nearly three decades? And if the case did go before a new jury, prosecutors would not only have to prove what happened on Michaela's circle that night, they would have to do it while carrying the weight of everything that had gone wrong or allegedly gone wrong the first time around. The jury instructions mark Barry's testimony. Questions about Brady's credibility and all the doubt that had been allowed to accumulate around the case for nearly thirty years. There was also the practical question of sentencing. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told the Review-Journal that prosecutors did not believe Mortensen would receive life without parole again if he were retried. Instead, they believed that if he were convicted again, he would likely receive a sentence that made him immediately eligible for parole. So the state was facing a narrow and challenging path. They could retry Mortensen and ask Daniels loved ones to live through another painful trial, knowing there was a real possibility that the prosecutors could lose outright and be left with no conviction at all. Or they could win, but still end up in roughly the same place, with Mortensen eligible for release because he had already served nearly thirty years. That was the brutal reality of the case in In twenty twenty five. So prosecutors had to decide whether to keep fighting for the original conviction or make a plea deal that preserved legal responsibility for Daniel's death, even if it would never feel like justice.

John For Mortensen, the choice was Justice Stark, but for a very different reason. He could reject a deal, roll the dice on a new trial, and risk spending the rest of his life in prison. Or he could accept a deal for lesser charges and walk out of prison. After almost three decades, Mortensen was apparently open to the deal, but he did not want to make a full confession. He wanted an Alford plea, which would have allowed him to accept the legal consequences while still maintaining his innocence, essentially telling the court that he was not admitting he killed Daniel. But he understood that a jury might convict him. The state refused, and on July first, twenty twenty five, after decades of insisting that Christopher Brady was the shooter. After thirty years of writing letters, filing appeals claiming that Metro protected Brady because of Brady's family connections and claiming he was a Metro political prisoner. Ron Mortenson pleaded guilty to second degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The judge imposed a sentence of fourteen to thirty five years, backdated to nineteen ninety seven, after half a lifetime in prison. Ron Mortenson was a free man. We're going to pause here for our first break, but when we come back, we'll talk about why even that plea didn't end the case.

Shaun Usually this is where the episode would end. And when I first started on this series, I fully expected it would have ended here as well. There was never going to be a satisfying ending. Not for Daniel's family, not for people who believed Mortenson should have served every day of his original life sentence, and not for people who believed Christopher Brady should have faced felony charges, too. But the story would have reached its conclusion, except Mortensen did not leave it there. In May twenty twenty six, right when I was beginning my research into this case, and less than a year after he entered the plea that allowed him to leave prison, Mortensen filed a motion to withdraw it. He has argued that his plea was not entered into knowingly, voluntarily or intelligently. Then in June, just as the first episodes were coming out, he filed a supplemental motion based on what he called newly discovered evidence.

John He has claimed there were problems with his attorney, that he was pressured and that cognitive impairment, mental health issues and brain injuries affected his ability to enter the plea. He also argued that his attorney didn't properly investigate or explain evidence involving Christopher Brady, impeachment material and other issues from the old case. Impeachment material would be evidence raised that would have called a witness's credibility into question, for example, past criminal history of a witness or prior inconsistent statements. The state's response to his motion was essentially no. The state argued that Mortensen signed a guilty plea agreement, saying he understood the charges had discussed possible defenses with his attorney, believed the plea was in his best interest, wasn't being coerced and was satisfied with his lawyer. The state also pointed to the plea hearing itself. According to the state, during the hearing, the judge asked Mortensen whether he understood what was happening, whether anyone had forced or threatened him, whether any promises had been made outside of the plea agreement, whether he had gone over the plea agreement with his attorney and whether he had any questions or concerns before the plea was accepted. And Mortensen's answers, according to the state, showed that he understood the plea and entered it voluntarily. The state also explained that Mortensen wanted an Alford plea, but when the state rejected it, his attorney told the court that even without the Alfred language, Mortensen still wanted to accept the offer and waive defects so he could get out of prison. During the hearing, the judge asked Mortensen if that was true, and Mortensen said yes. According to the state, Mortensen knew what he was doing, knew this wasn't an Alford plea, knew the deal, required an actual guilty plea, and accepted it because it allowed him to get out of prison. Now that he had received the benefit of the deal, the state said he should not be able to come back and argue that the plea should not count. But that's not all. If you look at the court docket from July into early August of twenty twenty six, it's filled with notices, objections, emergency motions, amended motions, requests for clarification, arguments about attorney representation, complaints about judicial conduct, and filings about whether the judge herself should be disqualified, all filed by Mortensen. By our count, between July second and August fifth alone, Mortensen filed fourteen separate documents, which is a lot of work for a man who has already pleaded guilty, received time served, and walked out of prison. It feels like Ron Mortensen is trying to litigate the entire history of his case all over again. One court filing at a time.

Shaun One of the many documents he filed in July includes a sworn affidavit seeking to disqualify District Judge Jacqueline Bluth, who had presided over his twenty twenty five plea and sentencing. His argument in broad terms, was that Judge Bluth should not be the person deciding these post-conviction issues because her own conduct, communications and handling of the case had now become part of what he was challenging. He alleged that she is not impartial because of what he described as communication or coordination between her law enforcement leadership and the prosecution around the time of his plea agreement. He also pointed to a June twenty twenty six event where court staff contacted the district attorney's office about whether or not the state intended to oppose his filing. The state said it had not received notice. The state was then given more time to respond, and Mortensen said he was only notified after the continuance had already been issued to Mortensen. That was not just a scheduling issue or common courtesy. It was part of a pattern that made him believe that the state had received one sided procedural access, while his own issues with service, counsel and access to the court remained unresolved. Judge Bluth's answer rejected all that, Judge Blue said. Neither ground satisfied the legal standard for disqualification. She wrote that the ultimate question was whether she had acted with bias, and that bias in her answer was nonexistent. At most, Mortensen had shown a disagreement with her rulings, complaints about procedure, and a chain of suspicions that were not enough to remove the judge from the case. Even now, it feels like this case keeps widening. What began as a motion to withdraw a guilty plea has now become a fight about council service, disability access and whether the judge herself can fairly decide the case. And then layered on top of that, Mortensen also submitted what he described as newly discovered evidence, which included an affidavit from an attorney who said that he had attended parts of Mortensen s nineteen ninety six trial and had reviewed the transcripts and records related to his plea. The affidavit is worth mentioning, in my opinion, because it shows the kind of narrative Mortensen is still trying to build. This attorney described old concerns about Brady, the firearms testimony, the handling of evidence, and what he called a Brady blackout, suggesting that Brady's memory loss after the shooting looked suspiciously convenient. This attorney also argued that the twenty twenty five plea transcript raised questions about whether Mortensen had enough opportunity to confer with his lawyer after the state refused to allow an Alford plea. He described Mortensen as a former Army officer, a person with professional and social connections in the community an athlete, a college graduate, a husband, a father, a homeowner, a disabled veteran, and someone who, in this attorney's view, adhered to extremely high moral standards. All in all, this strikes me as kind of odd. You don't usually have an attorney offer a sworn affidavit to the court regarding their own opinions on a case. As far as I know, he is not acting as Mortensen's attorney. I want to note that we do not have the budget to purchase every document filed in this case. I am just sharing information that we were able to obtain. Some of Mortensen's filings are eighty pages long or more and just aren't something we can get our hands on.

John It strikes me that nearly thirty years after Daniel Mendoza was killed, Mortensen's argument is still not necessarily a legal argument. It's an argument about his reputation. He is still trying to separate himself from the image of the off duty officer in the passenger seat of Brady's truck, still trying to present himself as the kind of man who could not have done what the jury said he did, and still trying to pull the case back toward Christopher Brady. Metro and the failures of everyone around him. The state has argued that the plea was voluntary. That his current claims are contradicted by the record, and that he accepted the deal because it allowed him to leave prison. Judge Bluth has rejected the idea that Mortensen's allegations show she is biased, but his tenacity for the last three decades is exactly why this case is not yet finished. Even after the conviction was overturned and he walked free, he still litigating not only what happened in twenty twenty five with his voluntary guilty plea, but also what happened that night in nineteen ninety six. What happened during the trial in nineteen ninety seven, and also what happened in the decades of appeals after that? He's seeking relief from a system when it's obvious he doesn't trust that system in the first place. As we record this, Mortensen's hearing on the matter is scheduled for August twenty fifth, twenty twenty six in just about two weeks. But he could file new documents this week, or there could be a continuance. I get the feeling there could be an update coming next season on this one, but for now, this is where the case still sits.

Shaun Mortensen has taken up a lot of space in this story. His trial, his appeals, his letters to the r-j, his scandal involving his grandmother, and now his newest motions. But this series wasn't really about Ron Mortensen. It was about what happened to Daniel Mendoza. And it was about what happened to Las Vegas after Daniel was killed. We're going to pause here with another quick break, but we'll be right back to talk about Daniel and the impact his murder left on Las Vegas Metro is not the same department it was in nineteen ninety six. There has been more training, more public scrutiny, more language around accountability, more diversity inside the department, and more formal review of police use of force. But that does not mean the deeper issues have ever gone away. In twenty twenty, during the George Floyd protests in downtown Las Vegas, Jorge Gomez, a young Latino man, was shot and killed by metro officers near the federal courthouse. Police said Gomez was armed and that the officers perceived a threat, but his family continued to fight for accountability and after criminal charges were not filed, they pursued the case in civil court. Years later, a federal jury awarded his family six point five million dollars. Like in Daniel's case, civil court has often become the place where families go when the criminal system does not give them the answers or accountability they hoped for. A civil case can force testimony, bring records into public view, and give a family some measure of validation that something went terribly wrong, but it still could not bring someone back. It cannot fully answer why a young man is dead, while the people who killed him remain outside of the criminal system.

John And then there is Brandon Durham, whose story we covered in episode fifty five and whose death is one of the most devastating recent examples of this same unresolved question. In November of twenty twenty four, Brandon Durham, a black man called nine hundred eleven because someone had broken into his home. When Officer Alexander Bookman entered the house, Brandon was struggling with the intruder over a knife, and within seconds Bookman had shot Durham, not the intruder. The person who called for help became the person who died. The Durham case was unusual because the Clark County District Attorney's Office did not simply decline charges and close the book. Da Steve Wolfson said he and senior attorneys believed there were reasonable grounds to think Bookman may have had criminal liability because the use of force may have been objectively unreasonable, and the case was presented to a grand jury. The grand jury returned a no true bill, meaning there would be no indictment, no criminal trial. And because grand jury proceedings are secret, no full public view of the evidence, testimony, arguments or reasoning behind the outcome. Then, as we were finishing this series, local news reported that Bookman was no longer with Metro. His attorney said Bookman had been eligible to return to duty but chose to resign, while news three reported that Metro listed the resignation as effective months earlier in March. So yes, Las Vegas changed after Daniel Mendoza. But when you look at Jorge Gomez, when you look at Brandon Durham, when you listen again to Ramon Mendoza saying that years after Daniel's death that everything felt the same, it's hard to say that the underlying issue disappeared.

Shaun And those are only two names. Las Vegas has heard this question in other cases, too. You see it in twenty seventeen, where Tasha Brown ran to the police for protection during a panic attack, only to take his last breath in a chokehold. You see it in twenty nineteen with Roy Scott, whose frantic call for help became fatal when he ended up forced to the ground by the officers and lost consciousness and later died. And with Byron Williams, who was stopped before sunrise for riding a bicycle without lights handcuffed on the ground and told officers seventeen times he could not breathe before he became unresponsive and died. Then in twenty twenty, when twelve year old Joseph, who was killed while being held hostage in a vehicle when Henderson officers opened fire during the attempted rescue. And you also see it in twenty twenty six with little three year old Cantrell also murdered during a hostage call, and whose family was also left asking why a rescue operation had ended in gunfire. Different years, different names, different facts. But the same question keeps surfacing in Las Vegas when police power turns deadly, who gets answers, who gets accountability, and who is asked to accept the official story and move on. Because before the multi-million dollar lawsuits, before the body cameras, before the public reports, before the review boards and the watchdogs, there was a quiet cul de sac off University in Paradise called McKellar circle.

John In the first hours after Daniel was killed, Ramon didn't see a system rushing to protect his family. He saw police photographing Daniel's grieving friends. He saw suspicion turn toward the young men mourning outside the apartment complex. He saw the label of gang member begin to crowd out the fact that Daniel had been a person, and he asked the question that has stayed with this case from the beginning why do you do nothing when my son is shot? Daniel Mendoza was killed in a city that was booming too fast to see everyone clearly. Vegas in the nineteen nineties was selling itself as a dream machine with new casinos, new neighborhoods, new money, and new people arriving every day. But just off the strip in the neighborhoods tourists never saw, Daniel's community was treated less like a part of the city's future and more like a problem to control. After Daniel died, people argued over what exactly he was a victim, a gang member, a symbol, a warning, a reason to reform Metro, a reason to defend Metro. A name and a trial, a lawsuit, a federal appeal and a police oversight debate. We will remind you that he was just twenty one years old. He worked at a Carl's Junior and a coffee shop near unlV. He was engaged. His mother died when he was a teenager, and his father, Ramon, worked overnight waxing floors and raised his children as a single parent. Daniel had plans. He wanted to save money. He wanted a home. He wanted a family. His father called him a dreamer, a young man full of hopes and illusions. And that is one of the cruelest parts of this story, because the legal system has spent decades arguing about Ron Mortensen, what he knew, what he intended, what the jury should have heard, what Brady claimed, what Mark Barry knew, and so on. But Daniel only got one life. It was a life that ended in seconds outside his home on McKellar circle, because two police officers decided his neighborhood was a place they could terrorize for fun. Ramon Mendoza never had the luxury of treating this case as an abstract legal problem. He had to watch strangers argue over whether Daniel was worthy of sympathy and listen as the case became a debate about police gangs, race evidence, credibility and public order. Still, Ramone never gave up having hope that Las Vegas could change for the better. He invited officers over to his home and showed them Daniel's photos. He sued. He spoke out. It's painful to acknowledge that even years later, after the trials, after Brady's federal plea, after Metro said changes had been made, Ramone was still saying that everything felt the same. And Las Vegas is still asking what accountability means when the people sworn to protect a community are the danger itself.

Shaun So this is where we leave this story. There is no clean ending with Mortensen's hearing still pending. But we want to close with Daniel, a son, a brother, a fiance, a friend, and a young man standing outside his home three days after Christmas. If this case changed Las Vegas, it's because Daniel's family and his community refused to let Las Vegas look away. They refused to let Daniel be reduced to a label, and they refused to let this city treat his death as just another violent night in a neighborhood people had already decided not to care about. We leave you with the dreamer and the dream that some day, no family will have to fight this hard to prove that their son mattered. Because what happens here happens everywhere.

John Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co/subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads @sinsandsurvivors If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions@sinsandsurvivors.com

Shaun If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or need support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website at sinspod.co/resources Since survivors, a Las Vegas True crime podcast, is researched, written, and produced by your host Sean and John, the information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com

John The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.