LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The attorney for a woman accusing two retired Metro detectives of framing her for murder and sending her to prison for over 16 years asked a federal jury to find in her favor and award her $34 million to compensate her for intentionally fabricating evidence.
“They had the opportunity to stop the train,” David Owens, attorney for Kirstin Lobato, said of the two detectives in closing arguments Tuesday.
Lobato was arrested in August 2001 for the brutal stabbing and beating death of a homeless man – Duran Bailey the month before. Bailey was found wrapped in plastic, severely battered and covered in knife wounds, his penis severed and his anus ruptured.
“The criminal justice system got it wrong,” Owens said. “Twice.”
Lobato was convicted of murder twice – once after the state supreme court granted her a new trial – and spent her entire adult life in prison until she was released in 2018. In October, a state court declared her innocent of the crime but last month the Clark County sheriff and district attorney questioned that decision.
In court Tuesday, Lobato’s attorney said the detectives “knew or were deliberately indifferent” when they pinned Bailey’s murder on Lobato. Lobato drew police’s interest when they learned she had been involved in a sexual assault over Memorial Day Weekend 2001, where she tried to – or in fact did – stab her attacker’s penis. Bailey’s penis was severed post-mortem, the attorneys said. Lobato, in a recorded statement before her arrest when she was 18, said she left her attacker alive when she escaped from him.
But in a 27-page officers’ report, retired detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle wrote that Lobato told them she “cut it off,” referring to her attacker’s penis. But that statement is not in Lobato’s voluntary recorded statement. The detectives indicated it was said before they turned on the tape recorder, but that they destroyed their notes in accordance with their standard practice.
“Even if she has severed the penis off a living person … It still doesn’t match the murder of Duran Bailey,” Owens said.
But the detectives’ attorney, Craig Anderson, said, “We have a factual dispute.”
Anderson told the jury Tuesday that Lobato and her attorneys were focusing on just seven lines in that 27-page report. Some of the contested issues, Anderson said, include Lobato telling detectives her attack was on the other side of town from where Bailey was murdered. Additionally, the detectives attributed a statement to Lobato in their report saying she was “into knives,” which Lobato said was not true and never said.
Anderson attempted to show that the detectives had reason to rely on their conclusions, especially considering Lobato told detectives “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” some 27 times.
“She is holding them accountable for information she didn’t remember,” Anderson said.
Lobato’s attorney also asked the jury to award her $40,000 in punitive damages. Tuesday was the seventh day of trial.
