Death row inmate lawsuit alleges authorities withheld evidence ...

Sheriff's deputies lead Rogers Lacaze, 18, out of the Kim Anh restaurant in July 1995 after Lacaze and the judge, jury and attorneys in Lacaze's trial returned to the scene of a triple slaying. (Photo by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune archive)

In a federal lawsuit aimed at forcing the FBI and Department of Justice to release documents that he says could help prove his innocence in a notorious triple-murder at an eastern New Orleans restaurant in 1995, death row inmate Rogers Lacaze accuses local and state officials of withholding evidence favorable to him throughout the years. Specifically, Lacaze claims, state prosecutors and New Orleans police have suppressed information supporting his claims that it was not him but rather the brother of his co-defendant who helped carry out the killings.

Jurors found Lacaze, now 36, guilty of committing the first-degree murders of New Orleans Police Officer Ronald "Ronnie" Williams II and siblings Cuong Vu and Ha Vu, who were all killed with a 9mm handgun at Kim Anh restaurant during a robbery March 4, 1995. A separate jury also convicted Antoinette Frank, 41, who was a rookie New Orleans officer at the time.

Frank was Williams' partner, and they both often provided security at the restaurant. Lacaze and Frank were sentenced to death in the killings, and are in the post-conviction phases of their state appeals. Lacaze -- portrayed as the shooter of all the victims -- confessed to being at the restaurant while Frank gunned down Williams, Cuong Vu and Ha Vu, but later said police beat that admission out of him.

Despite being identified by witnesses at trial as being at the restaurant, Lacaze,?who was?described as a close friend of Frank's, says that he was not at the business. He says Frank's accomplice was her brother, Adam Frank Jr. The state Supreme Court has previously upheld Lacaze's conviction on the strength of other evidence.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office could not comment on the allegations in Lacaze's lawsuit Wednesday morning. A spokesman said the office would review the suit and perhaps issue a statement in the afternoon.

Lacaze's federal lawsuit offers up the role NOPD officer Stanley Morlier played as a witness at his and Antoinette Frank's trials as an example of the alleged withholding of evidence. At Lacaze's trial, Morlier was questioned by the defense about confrontations Williams may have had with Adam and Antoinette Frank at the restaurant. Morlier denied there were any such confrontations.

But at Antoinette Frank's subsequent trial, the lawsuit says, Morlier testified that he and Williams once had to eject Adam Frank from Kim Anh restaurant. Morlier also noted that Antoinette Frank confronted him afterward and said, "You tell Ronnie Williams that when he messes with my brother he's messing with me, and I'll take him out," according to the lawsuit.

Lacaze says he "was not aware of these facts until after Officer Morlier testified in Ms. Frank's trial."

Also called by the defense at Lacaze's trial, NOPD Capt. John Landry testified that the department had discovered Adam Frank Jr. was wanted on attempted manslaughter counts only two months before the Anh Kim killings. Landry didn't explain further.

In post-conviction proceedings, Lacaze obtained a report by Landry revealing that, before the killings, two NOPD officers were sent to Antoinette Frank's home to "conduct a 'wanted check for her brother.'" That had not been disclosed to Lacaze, his federal lawsuit claims.

Lacaze says authorities also never disclosed to him that they had investigated the possibility Adam Frank had been given the weapon they think was used in the murders. According to the federal lawsuit and other appellate documents, NOPD officer David Talley, custodian of the police gun vault, gave statements to investigators that he had obtained a 9mm Beretta Model 92G for Antoinette Frank through a court-order bearing the signature of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Frank Marullo. It is unclear whether Marullo, who presided over the trials of Lacaze and Frank, actually provided the signature on the document himself.

Weeks before the Kim Anh murders, Antoinette Frank reported the Beretta as stolen. Though it was never recovered, authorities think that was the gun used to kill Williams and the Ha siblings.

Talley testified about how he got the gun for Antoinette Frank at her trial. But Lacaze says none of that information was given to him, prohibiting him from demonstrating at his trial that the murder weapon was given to Frank, not him, which would have discredited the state's theory at his trial that he was the shooter. Lacaze had never been convicted of a crime prior to the Kim Anh rampage, and his lawyers say in filings that no physical evidence tied him to the scene of the killings.

Items that were stolen from the restaurant, including $10,000 in cash and Williams' service revolver, were never located in Lacaze's or Frank's possession.

NOPD, prior to the defendants' trials, questioned Talley about his knowledge of Adam Frank's connections to the Kim Anh restaurant; Adam Frank's access to guns from the Central Evidence and Property Division; and Adam Frank's whereabouts at the time Williams and the Ha siblings were killed. NOPD also asked Talley if he knew whether Antoinette Frank had given the Beretta from the evidence and property room to her brother. Police warned Talley that if his statements were false, he was exposing himself to being liable in the Kim Anh killings.

Talley admitted knowing Adam Frank but denied knowing whether he had ever gotten the gun from his sister. Lacaze says he was not made aware of that questioning prior to or at his trial, information that would have cast suspicion on the man Lacaze says aided Antoinette Frank in the murders.

In 1998, Adam Frank was arrested in Rayville in northeastern Louisiana, where he was living under the name of Keith Jackson. Reports generated by Adam Frank's arrest reveal that authorities originally stopped him because at least one person heard him "bragging about killing a New Orleans police officer," Lacaze's lawsuit says.

Furthermore, a separate but associated appellate filing in state court alleges that, after being sent to prison for an unrelated armed robbery in 2003, Adam Frank bragged to a fellow inmate that he had shot an officer in the head and killed him at a New Orleans restaurant "because the cop shook him down." The filing does not elaborate on what may have been meant by "shook him down." Adam Frank, the filing maintains, plotted unsuccessfully on that occasion to break out of prison -- he said during the planning that he wanted to escape to aid his sister, who had been given the death penalty for the cop's murder.

The day following his arrest in Rayville in 1998, which was prompted by a tip to police from a confidential informant, Adam Frank escaped custody, filings say. Authorities released a notice that Frank was at-large and wanted by, among other agencies, the FBI in New Orleans, Lacaze's federal lawsuit says.

Adam Frank was recaptured within about a month, and he had a 9mm Beretta Model 92G on him, Lacaze's lawsuit adds. The filing says, "This was the same caliber, make and model as the weapon that ... the state alleged was used to commit the 1995 murders."

The serial number on the pistol Adam Frank had was rubbed off, but crime lab personnel managed to recover part of it. What was recovered matched the serial number on the weapon police allege was used at Kim Anh, Lacaze's lawsut says. That gun was destroyed before anyone tested it against bullets and casings at the restaurant, according to statements at a court hearing.

As part of Lacaze's post-conviction proceedings, the Orleans Parish district attorney's office had to produce documents pertinent to his case. There was also a list of documents classified as "privileged" and withheld from the case file Lacaze was given. Those documents included six pages labeled as Adam Frank's FBI rap sheet.

On Feb. 24, Lacaze's lawyer, Blythe Taplin of the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, lodged a Freedom of Information Act request seeking federal documents about Adam Frank, who remains in the state penitentiary serving a 65-year sentence for the robbery he was convicted of in 2003.

On March 14, the FBI denied Lacaze's request. The agency declined to say whether the records exist and refused to release any documents without "express authorization and consent of the third party, proof that the subject of your request is deceased, or a clear demonstration that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the personal privacy interest and that significant public benefit would result from the disclosure of the requested records."

Taplin filed an administrative appeal March 21, arguing that the possibility of exonerating a death row inmate was a public benefit that is greater than Adam Frank's privacy. Taplin's appeal was denied.

Attorneys with the Miller & Chevalier firm in Washington, D.C., filed a FOIA lawsuit in Washington Federal District Court on behalf of Lacaze and Taplin. In part, the petition is aiming to have the refusal of the FBI and the Justice Department to produce the relevant papers ruled improper, and it pleads for an order directing the defendants to immediately process the requested records in their entirety.

Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/11/in_lawsuit_death_row_inmate_al.html

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