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'91 murder conviction challenged
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- Michael Mordenti has spent 10 years on death row, maintaining his innocence and fighting to be set free. His daughters believe that day will come. Kathy Mordenti, 42, and her sister, Michelle, 37, have spent the past two days listening to testimony in the evidentiary hearing for their father, now 60, convicted in 1991 of killing a woman at an Odessa horse farm in a murder-for-hire scheme. They think witnesses lied, prosecutors manipulated witnesses and Mordenti's attorney at the time was incompetent. And what they've heard so far has pleased them. Mordenti's former defense attorney, John Atti, acknowledged on the stand Tuesday that he made mistakes, calling numerous missteps "oversights." Two metallurgists disputed statements made at Mordenti's trial that connected the former St. Petersburg used car salesman to bullets used to gun down Thelma Royston. And a witness recanted his trial testimony that Mordenti was a member of the Mafia, saying prosecutors allowed him to visit with his girlfriend in exchange for his testimony and that he retaliated against Mordenti for cooperating with the FBI in an armed robbery case. "It's supposed to be a puzzle," Kathy Mordenti said Tuesday. "And it doesn't fit. Eleven years of knowing that this whole thing doesn't fit, it's been a long time." Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe will determine whether to grant Mordenti a new trial. The hearing continues today and will resume Nov. 27, at which time the state's star witness, Mordenti's ex-wife, is expected to testify. No physical evidence links Mordenti to the crime, but Gail Mordenti's testimony provided the punch prosecutors needed. Authorities said the victim's husband, Larry Royston, paid $17,000 to have her killed because they were in a bitter divorce. Royston asked Gail Mordenti, with whom he was having an affair, about paying a hit man. She told jurors she hired her ex-husband. The prosecutor at the time, Karen Cox, did not tell defense attorneys about the affair. On the stand Tuesday afternoon, Cox said the affair was hearsay, and she didn't think that it was relevant. Thelma Royston was shot to death in 1989. Larry Royston died of an overdose the night before his trial was to begin. Prosecution experts had testified during the trial that bullets pumped into her body came from the same box of bullets that Gail Mordenti said she got from her husband. But bullet experts Monday and Tuesday said that could never be determined. Mordenti's current defense attorney, Martin McClain, believes that Gail Mordenti had someone else murder Thelma Royston but framed Mordenti. McClain, working for the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that represents death row inmates, questioned Atti, Mordenti's former defense lawyer, extensively Tuesday. He showed Atti several court documents that Atti said were never provided to him. Atti resigned his license to practice in 1993 after charges he misappropriated client funds and failed to provide competent representation in other cases. Mordenti's case was his first murder trial. In another blow to prosecutors, inmate Horace Barnes on Monday recanted his testimony that Mordenti was a member of the mob. He admitted to having a grudge against Mordenti because Mordenti provided authorities with information about Barnes, who committed an armed robbery in a car that Mordenti had loaned him. Cox, who was suspended by the Florida Supreme Court for letting a witness testify under a false name in a separate case and resigned from her position as a federal prosecutor in June, testified that she never allowed Barnes special visits with his girlfriend.
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