Attorney blames police for client’s troubles after he was identified as robber in lineup

Evidence against 37-year-old Joshua Donizetti seemed solid.

Using a photo lineup, four people identified Donizetti as the stocky Hispanic man with the shaved head and sideburns who robbed them at gunpoint of more than $1,500 at an apartment on Karen Avenue, near Lamb Boulevard.

Police later arrested Donizetti because of the identifications, and he spent 31/2 months in the county jail.

The problem for authorities began when the seemingly strong case for the May 13 heist began to unravel.

His attorney, Monti Levy, blames Las Vegas police for Donizetti's troubles.

Levy said the police use of the photo lineup was prejudicial because it contained five other men who looked nothing like Donizetti: Two are thin white men, while the remaining three are somewhat stocky, but clearly not Hispanic.

It would be impossible not to pick out Donizetti in a lineup that was so stacked against him, Levy said.

"I've seen bad photo lineups. Normally photo lineups suck. But I've never seen any as bad as this one," she said.

The district attorney's office sided with Levy and, based on the lineup and other evidence later uncovered by Levy, dropped all charges against Donizetti last November.

Donizetti said he now wants to sue Las Vegas police, maintaining his life was ruined. He missed work and also couldn't spend Halloween and Thanksgiving with his 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

His girlfriend and mother of his children, Meredith Levine, was also pregnant at the time and he couldn't care for her. She had to move back in with relatives, Donizetti said.

"Basically, everyone thought I was going away" to prison, he said.

According to a warrant for Donizetti's arrest, four people were robbed at the Karen Avenue apartment.

The victims told police that a woman knocked on the door and, when they opened it, the woman said, "Hi, I'm Chelsea."

A stocky Hispanic with the shaved head then pushed his way into the apartment, brandished the handgun and threatened to shoot the occupants.

"Give me your money (expletive) or I'm going to kill you," he said, according to the warrant.

They took money and fled.

About two months later, on July 16, police received information that a woman named Chelsea Paddock was in jail. Her boyfriend, Joshua Donizetti, was going to commit robberies to get her bail money, according to the warrant.

Police put two and two together and believed Paddock was the woman who identified herself as "Chelsea" during the Karen Avenue robbery. They believed Donizetti was with her.

When police put Donizetti's photo in the lineup, all four witnesses identified him.

Las Vegas police Lt. Clint Nichols, who is in charge of the robbery unit, said police believed they had the right guy because of the lineup ID's.

"You're talking about four victims picking the same guy, with the same photo lineup. That's pretty significant," Nichols said.

He conceded photo lineups aren't perfect but he saw nothing wrong with the one used to identify Donizetti.

"We're never going to get twin pictures of folks. We get the closest we can," he said. "They're never going to be mirror images."

Police conducted a second photo lineup after they received information that Donizetti might not be the robber, Nichols said. This time, only two witnesses identified Donizetti.

"The last thing we want to do is send someone to jail who shouldn't be there," Nichols said.

Donizetti believes the only reason he isn't still in jail is because of Levy, who had an investigator look into his claims of innocence and uncovered evidence showing he wasn't responsible. The investigator confirmed that Donizetti wasn't Paddock's boyfriend and also determined that another man named "Jose" might have been responsible.

Donizetti does know Paddock, but he described her merely as an acquaintance. Paddock is facing charges related to the May incident, but no one else is facing charges, authorities said.

Levy admitted that even she was skeptical about Donizetti's innocence when she got the case. "I'm sorry, but when you have four people ID-ing you? I was like, 'What do you want to do? You got to take a deal.'"

Levy said attorneys with the public defender's office who first represented Donizetti thought he might not have been competent to stand trial because he was so confused about how and why he was in jail and accused of armed robbery.

After the case was dismissed, Levy said the public defender came up to her and was amazed that Donizetti was innocent.

Levy recalled the attorney saying to her, "So, you mean he's not crazy?"

Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara @reviewjournal.com or (702) 380-1039.