Death Penalty May Be Sought in Las Vegas Slaying

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles may seek the death penalty against three men charged with committing a murder for hire in Las Vegas in November as part of a nationwide heroin and conspiracy ring, according to court records and interviews.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie has directed lawyers from the U.S. attorney’s office to notify him by Feb. 28 if they plan to ask for a death sentence against Edward Stanley Jr. of Los Angeles and Daniel Ray Bennett and Roy Lee Lovett Jr., both of Las Vegas.

The three men were indicted on murder-for-hire charges by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles last Friday. According to the indictment, Stanley commissioned Bennett and Lovett to murder Rickey Ray Hall because Hall had lost some of the Stanley drug organization’s money.

Stanley and a dozen other individuals also were indicted on charges of conspiring to distribute narcotics and various other narcotics offenses.

If the government seeks the death penalty, it would be the first time that the U.S. attorney’s office in the Central District of California has done that under the murder-for-hire statute that was amended in 1994, a year when Congress enacted a number of federal laws carrying the death penalty.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen G. Wolfe said the Justice Department has a formal process in place for making death penalty decisions. Initially, he said that the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles will make a recommendation to the department in Washington and that officials there will make a recommendation to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. Wolfe said Reno has the final call.

Wolfe said he could not comment on how the government was leaning at this point.

David Chesnoff, the Las Vegas attorney who represents Stanley, said that since he has not yet reviewed the government’s evidence, “it would be difficult to comment on the merits of the case.”

However, Chesnoff, a veteran defense lawyer who has handled many high-profile cases, added, “We’ll pursue every avenue we can with the Justice Department to persuade them against seeking the death penalty.” Chesnoff said he had represented Stanley, 58, in several cases during the past decade and that his client had no history of violence. Stanley is being held without bail in Los Angeles.

Bennett, 27, and Lovett, 18, are being held without bail in Las Vegas and are expected to be transported to Los Angeles in the near future. All three men were arrested in mid-December. Bennett was previously convicted of second-degree murder in a Nevada state court and served seven years, according to court documents.

The alleged murder-for-hire scheme was discovered after authorities tapped the phones of Stanley and several other individuals. The wiretaps were authorized by a Los Angeles federal judge, acting upon information gathered by a joint task force--FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and police from Los Angeles and Las Vegas. At one point, federal agents thought they had discovered who was the target of the hit and that man was warned, according to an affidavit filed in December by FBI agent Ronald Twersky.

But the target was never mentioned by name in the phone conversations, and the agents found out that they had warned the wrong man when “on Nov. 26, 1996, Bennett called Stanley to report that he had killed the intended target.” The affidavit describes in detail a number of intercepted phone conversations, including discussions about how big a gun was going to be used and how much the killers would be paid--up to $200,000.

Just before being killed, the victim told Bennett, “I don’t know you, man,” according to Twersky’s affidavit, which also states that Bennett “chased the injured victim two blocks before finishing him off with additional shots.”

The scope of the narcotics operation is not fully described in the court documents. Federal law enforcement authorities believe the drug ring took cocaine from L.A. to Memphis, hiding the drugs in hidden compartments behind the back seats of Nissan Maximas.

On Nov. 3 in Memphis, acting on information obtained on wiretaps, members of the task force seized $564,000 in cash that was hidden in a vehicle driven by a man described in the indictment as one of Stanley’s drug couriers. The affidavit states that the money was the product of the sale of 27 kilograms of cocaine.

Twersky’s affidavit also describes the activities of an unnamed confidential informant who made drug buys from Stanley last fall. The affidavit states that the informant has been a confidential source for the DEA for more than 10 years. During that time, the informant has participated in more than 100 drug-related investigations and been paid “more than $1,000,000 for his/her expenses and services in investigations,” which have led to numerous arrests and convictions, according to the affidavits.