Death row inmate says prosecutor made trial unfair

Prosecutor Karen Cox's actions tainted his trial, he says. His attorneys say the trial was poorly run, as well.

By LARRY DOUGHERTY

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 1, 2000

TAMPA -- A death row inmate contends in court papers that prosecutor Karen Cox withheld crucial evidence and tried to twist a witness' testimony in his 1991 trial.

The inmate, Michael Mordenti, was convicted of accepting $17,000 to murder Thelma Royston in an Odessa horse barn in 1989.

Mordenti's attorneys say they have handwritten notes by Cox showing she sought to guide the testimony of her star witness, Mordenti's ex-wife.

Cox wrote, "Don't mention rings, just jewelry," in the margin of a deposition of Gail Mordenti, according to papers filed in Circuit Court on Friday.

The significance of that, the attorneys say, is that the victim was not wearing any rings when she was found. Gail Mordenti was testifying to details of the crime she said her ex-husband told her, and prosecutors might have feared the jury would doubt her credibility if the details weren't correct, the motion said. At trial, though, Gail Mordenti did mention rings.

The motions filed Friday amend an earlier request for a new trial for Mordenti, a 59-year-old former used-car dealer from St. Petersburg.

Cox, 37, left the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office three years ago to become a federal prosecutor. She now is waiting for the Florida Supreme Court to decide her punishment for having a witness testify under a false name in an unrelated case in federal court.

Cox declined to comment Friday. Her husband, Nick Cox, who was her co-counsel on the Mordenti case, said Friday there had been no misconduct in the case and that Mordenti's attorneys were doing "whatever they can to get their client off death row or get him a new trial."

The papers filed Friday claim Cox failed to tell the defense about information that would have undercut the credibility of Mordenti's ex-wife at trial.

Mordenti's ex-wife was the sole witness to place Mordenti in the murder-for-hire plot. She received immunity for her testimony. No physical evidence linked Mordenti to the crime.

Mordenti's lead defense attorney at trial, John Leonard Atti of St. Petersburg, resigned his license to practice in 1993 in the face of charges of misappropriation of client funds and failure to provide competent representation. The papers filed Friday provide extended criticism of Atti's representation of Mordenti. They say he failed to adequately challenge a state case made of "smoke and mirrors."

"The state was able to introduce a gun, which had absolutely no connection to the crime," the papers said. "The state was able to introduce a knife, which had absolutely no connection to the crime. The state was able to introduce that Mr. Mordenti had sold a gun, which was in absolutely no way connected to the crime."

The prosecution also is criticized for presenting a witness who testified Mordenti was "in the mob." Although it upheld Mordenti's conviction in 1994, the Florida Supreme Court stated that the mob comment was a serious flaw in the case.

Defense attorneys say Karen Cox failed to tell Mordenti's trial attorneys that Gail Mordenti had had an affair with Larry Royston, the estranged husband who allegedly hired Mordenti to kill his wife. Royston died of a drug overdose the night before his trial was to begin.

Had the jury heard of the affair between Larry Royston and Gail Mordenti, the defense attorneys argued, they would have seen her larger role in the killing and her motive to shift blame onto her ex-husband.

"As co-counsel in the case, I don't remember anything about any kind of affair going on between Gail and Larry," Nick Cox said Friday.

Mordenti's attorneys, from the Tallahassee-based office of the state's Capital Collateral Counsel, could not be reached for comment.

Mordenti is the second Florida death row inmate to make allegations that Karen Cox committed misconduct as a state prosecutor.

Larry Dougherty can be reached at (813) 226-3337 or dougherty@sptimes.com

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