‘Shocking’ amount of undisclosed evidence: Idaho man walks free after 4 years in prison
A Mountain Home man who was serving a 10-year fixed sentence for one count of solicitation to murder has been released four years into his sentence after a judge determined violations regarding evidence handling and ineffective counsel led to his conviction.
Ricky Weaver’s conviction was vacated after the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office found undisclosed evidence at the bottom of a closet, as well as undisclosed phone records. Weaver’s attorney, John DeFranco, also acknowledged that he was not fully prepared in his defense given the missing evidence.
“While not all the undisclosed evidence was necessarily favorable, the sheer amount of evidence that was not disclosed is shocking,” 4th District Judge James Cawthon wrote in his decision.
Weaver was arrested in Elmore County on Dec. 20, 2018, while awaiting transportation to Owyhee County on attempted strangulation and domestic battery charges in connection with his ex-girlfriend. Prosecutors said Weaver, who was incarcerated at Elmore County Jail, later tried to hire Michael Wallace, who was incarcerated at Elmore County Jail alongside Weaver, to kill the woman for $2,000.
Weaver was tried before a jury and found guilty of solicitation to murder in March 2020.
But Weaver filed a post-conviction petition seeking to vacate his conviction in June 2021, arguing that Elmore County Prosecutor Daniel Page and former Elmore County Deputy Zachary Parlin had committed prosecutorial misconduct in his case and violated his right to a fair trial. Weaver claimed he had ineffective assistance of counsel, which is when a criminal defendant’s legal representation fails to meet a minimum standard of competence and diligence.
Cawthon granted his petition after reviewing evidence that had been missing in his trial and admittance from Weaver’s attorney, DeFranco, that he would have tried the case much differently had he known all the facts.
Weaver was released from prison earlier this month. The Elmore County Prosecutor’s Office and Sheriff’s Office didn’t respond to requests for comment from the Idaho Statesman.
Cellphone records undisclosed during trial
Parlin seized Weaver’s phone and extracted it for evidence in December 2018 after the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office ordered a search warrant. But texts discovered between Weaver and his ex-girlfriend were never disclosed during Weaver’s trial, Cawthon said in his written decision.
Page admitted in an email to one of Weaver’s previous defense attorneys that he had found 1,189 pages’ worth of texts between Weaver and his ex-girlfriend on Parlin’s computer. Parlin denied any knowledge of the extraction despite his office ordering the search warrant, according to Cawthon’s written decision.
Cawthon said Parlin didn’t explain what happened to those text messages following the search, and that Page’s denial of knowing about the extraction contradicts the fact that his office specifically prepared the search warrant to extract digital evidence.
One of the outstanding pieces of evidence comes from Aug. 2, 2018, when the ex-girlfriend, Melanie Kastner, said Weaver struck her with a revolver while on a fishing trip. However, Cawthon said photos from that date and text messages around that time contradicted Kastner’s allegations.
Weaver also said he noticed some text messages had been deleted in the year since he was tried and convicted of the solicitation case.
Forensic expert Wayne Joselyn in his affidavit wrote that the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office handled the phone in a “lackadaisical way.” On multiple occasions, Joselyn wrote, he arrived at the office and found the phone lying on a desk at the main entrance of the building without a password on the phone.
Jury finds Weaver guilty
Weaver and Kastner shared custody of Weaver’s biological daughter, according to the written decision. After facing a domestic violence charge, of which he was never convicted, Weaver lost custody of his child. Kastner in court testimony said Weaver was abusive and threatened to kill her if she did anything that would make him lose custody of his daughter.
Wallace during trial testified that Weaver asked him to murder “his wife or the mother of his child.” He went on to say that Weaver offered him $2,000 and would give him $200 upfront. In Weaver’s defense, DeFranco tried to show that Weaver didn’t want Kastner killed and that he just wanted Wallace to repossess Weaver’s 1992 Honda Accord from Kastner.
Kastner had reported to police in June 2018 that Weaver raped her on two occasions earlier that year. But he was never prosecuted because she had previously written letters confessing to submitting false police reports relating to Weaver, according to Cawthon’s written decision.
Weaver’s jail call to mother
On the afternoon of Nov. 29, 2018, just moments after prosecutors said the solicitation occurred, Weaver called his mother from the Elmore County Jail. In the call, which was recorded, Weaver made several comments to his mother about Kastner, and told her to “try to be nice to her” and “to look past her hatred.”
Weaver also asked his mother to change the garage code on his house so Kastner could not gain entry, which Cawthon said indicated that Weaver expected Kastner to continue “harassing him.” Cawthon also noted that those instructions to his mom would not have been necessary had Weaver ordered a hit on Kastner.
Cawthon said Weaver only had $50 on his books at the time of the call and didn’t even have the $200 upfront to pay Wallace, and he likely would’ve asked his mother for the money if he needed it. Weaver also talked to his mother about the need to get his 1992 Honda Accord back from Kastner, which corroborates Weaver’s defense during his trial.
Elmore County Jail records all prisoner calls, and although Page admitted to listening to some calls, he didn’t admit to listening to the call between Weaver and his mother. Cawthon found Page’s testimony not credible, and questioned why he requested hundreds of calls that Weaver had made during his time in jail but did not listen to calls around the time the solicitation allegedly took place.
Cawthon concluded that Page most likely knew about Weaver’s call with his mother and failed to disclose that information.
Additional evidence found in a closet
Susie McKerchie, an administrative assistant and evidence technician for the detectives division, found a box of police reports and recordings at the bottom of a closet in the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office. McKerchie in testimony said she didn’t recall when she found the box, but that Parlin likely left it there when he retired.
Cawthon found that the evidence box was another example of Parlin’s “sloppy” record-keeping. The evidence in the box didn’t go through the typical chain of custody procedures and failed to log the evidence, the judge said.
Part of the undocumented evidence included evidence suggesting that Kastner had made false allegations against Weaver in the past.
Although Weaver has been set free and his conviction vacated, the case will be reopened and reexamined, according to Cawthon’s conclusions.
Weaver will remain free under his own recognizance, his attorney Nathan Olsen told the Idaho Statesman, which means he’ll be required to show up for court and any other future hearings related to the case.
This story was originally published June 10, 2024 at 2:28 PM.
