Luxor bombing witness in court

The only witness to a fatal bombing May 7 at the Luxor entered District Judge Stewart Bell's courtroom Friday, her brow furrowed and appearing scared and confused.

With her hands cuffed and a belly chain around her waist, 28-year-old Caren Chali trailed three defendants into the courtroom.

Her home since May 24 has been the Clark County Detention Center. Her 3-year-old daughter is at Child Haven, the county home for abused and neglected children.

Chali hasn't been charged with a crime, but prosecutors need her to help put away Omar Rueda-Denvers, who along with Porfirio Duarte-Herrera is charged with murder.

Chali is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala and, until Friday, she has not had an attorney to represent her.

"Rob, that's your girl, in the back," Bell told defense attorney Robert Langford at Friday's hearing.

Langford spoke briefly with Chali in court through a Spanish interpreter.

Asked after the hearing if it appears Chali's due process rights have been violated as she's languished in jail without representation for a summer, Langford said, "I've only been on the case 15 minutes, but my gut instinct is yes."

But he acknowledged it appears prosecutors are doing everything they can to help her.

Authorities allege Rueda-Denvers, also known as Alexander Perez, had Duarte-Herrera construct a pipe bomb intended to kill Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio and perhaps Chali as well.

Police believe the crime involved a triangle of romantic relationships that pivoted around Chali.

The defendants are accused of placing the bomb in a coffee cup atop Dorantes Antonio's car on the second floor of the Luxor parking garage.

Shortly after the crime, prosecutors sought a material witness warrant to keep Chali from being deported. By that time, federal immigration authorities had picked her up.

Even if she wasn't being held on that warrant, "she'd be in jail anyway," prosecutor David Stanton said. "(Then) she'd be deported."

Chali, who is being held with other female inmates in a large cell with multiple beds, is one of two inmates at the jail being held on a material witness warrant.

The warrants can be issued if a key witness in a criminal proceeding is a flight risk and it is shown that it "may become impracticable" to secure the presence of the witness by subpoena. They generally are used for combative witnesses who probably won't show up to testify, Langford said.

"She's expressed a willingness to testify, but it's a unique situation," Langford said. "If she's released, there's a good possibility she'll be removed from the U.S. The only way to prevent that is to keep her here in state custody."

A judge can order Chali's release if it appears she's been in custody too long, but state law does not set any statutory deadline.

Next week in District Judge Michael Villani's courtroom, prosecutors will schedule a video deposition of Chali's testimony in an effort to expedite her release.

Bell urged attorneys Friday to move the deposition process along, but he did not say anything about releasing Chali.

"If she's going to get deported, that's about as strong a proof that she'd be unavailable to testify as a witness as you can get," Bell said.

Stanton said that inmates being held on material witness warrants don't have an automatic right to counsel, but that in this case all of the parties thought appointing her an attorney was important.

Maggie McLetchie, a public advocate for the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court should have appointed Chali an attorney earlier in the process.

The ACLU has fought the abuse of material witness warrants for terrorism investigations on a federal level since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she said.

"The ACLU thinks her video deposition should have been done earlier if the defendants' right to confront the witness could have been adequately protected at the same time," she said.

Prosecutor Nell Keenan said prosecutors initially intended to hold Chali on the material witness warrant until a preliminary hearing, which was first scheduled in June.

During such a hearing, Chali's version of events could be recorded for use at the trial, now scheduled for May 27.

But that preliminary hearing was continued, and the defendants later waived their right to have such a hearing and the case was brought to District Court.

A motion was then scheduled in Bell's courtroom to get Chali an attorney.

"I care about what happens to Caren," Keenan said. "She didn't commit any crimes except being here illegally, and we don't have any jurisdiction over that."

She added that Chali does not want to go back to Guatemala.

Rueda-Denvers' attorney, Pete Christiansen, said his client is "very upset" that Chali is in custody because their daughter is at Child Haven.

Chali does not have any other family members here to take care of the girl, Keenan said.

Prosecutors also have expressed concerns for Chali's safety should she be released in Las Vegas. The defendants, Keenan said, "have a lot of contacts from their countries that are living here."

Once Chali's video deposition is taken, she probably will be deported to Guatemala.

But that deposition probably won't occur for at least a month because of a three-week murder trial that Clark Patrick, Duarte-Herrera's attorney, is handling beginning Tuesday.

And there are other scheduling conflicts that could arise among the five attorneys handling this case, Keenan said.

"Maybe do it on a Saturday," Bell said. "Because it's not fundamentally fair to hold her too long."