OGDEN -- As Jeremy Valdes faces the death penalty in a double homicide, he recently e-mailed a letter to the Ogden Utah Standard-Examiner, much to the surprise of lawyers on both sides of the case.
Commenting on a June 25 hearing on a motion to suppress his apparent confession to the murders, Valdes comments on a police officer cousin's testimony against him, calling another officer apparently drunk on the stand, and attacks, mildly, the credibility of his co-defendant Miranda Statler. She is the main witness against him and is already serving a potential 20-year prison term for her guilty pleas in the murder case.
Valdes also faults the Standard-Examiner's coverage, and concludes by casting votes for cartoons under consideration by the paper.
"While I have you here, my friends and I would like to request that you bring back the comics, Pearls Before Swines and Garfield. Thank you."
Valdes assails the testimony of Sgt. Shane Hubbard of the Roy Police Department at the June 25 hearing, which has been continued to Aug. 13: " ... was so impaired that he literally nodded off several times during his very slurred and confusing testimony. There is no way that Judge Di Caria (sic) and the prosecution didn't notice. The reason I'm certain, that his testimony was cut short."
Advised of the letter, Weber County Attorney Dee Smith asked to respond on Hubbard's behalf: "That's ridiculous," Smith said. "He didn't nod off and he certainly wasn't impaired. I'm certain Mr. Valdes is saying that because Sgt. Hubbard's testimony is very damaging to his case."
Smith said he found the statement peculiar because Hubbard wasn't the only officer in the room at the time of Valdes' admissions. He wouldn't comment further.
Like the prosecution, defense attorneys had no idea Valdes was sending the letter, transmitted by e-mail from a relative.
"We, and defense attorneys in general, absolutely do not like clients doing that," Ryan Bushell said. "It hinders what we're trying to do with a case. We want to control what goes out to the press."
Bushell also declined to comment further.
Valdes is currently held without bail in the Weber County Jail.
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