Attorneys say Metro intercepted attorney-client communication, want murder case dismissed

Attorneys for a former congressional candidate accused of killing another man say the case should be thrown out because the Metropolitan Police Department improperly intercepted and recorded communication between the defendantand prominent defense attorney David Chesnoff.

“Everybody knows that you’re not supposed to listen to attorney-client conversations and you’re not supposed to listen to the conversations of people that are married,” Chesnoff said in court last week. “Metropolitan Police in this investigation, after having an original case that was not a murder case, decided to turn this into a murder case by using unconstitutional material.”

Authorities say Daniel Rodimer, 47, attacked Christopher Tapp, 47, at an October 2023 party in a Resorts World suite and beat him. Rodimer was angry that Tapp had offered his stepdaughter cocaine, according to police.

Rodimer, a former pro wrestler, was endorsed by Donald Trump when he ran for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020.

Tapp had spent decades in an Idaho prison for a murder he did not commit and had won an $11.7 million settlement after his release.

Defense: authorities abused warrants and wiretaps

As of late Monday afternoon, District Judge Tierra Jones had not yet ruled on Rodimer’s request to dismiss his case. If Jones does not throw out the case, Rodimer’s attorneys want her to suppress evidence.

Police are saying little.

Metro responded to a request for comment with an email that said, “This is an ongoing case through court” and invited a reporter to request public records, but provided no information about what happened in Rodimer’s case.

Chesnoff and his law partner Richard Schonfeld argued authorities were initially faced with a difficult case, based on the account of a “drug-addled” partygoer. There was also a toxicology report that said Tapp died because of drugs and alcohol, they said in a filing.

To make a case, then, the state “abused its court-ordered warrants and wiretaps to pierce and invade Mr. Rodimer’s attorney-client and marital communications privileges,” the attorneys said.

Authorities “repeatedly seized confidential communications between Mr. Rodimer and Mr. Chesnoff,” Chesnoff and Schonfeld said in court papers. They indicated that those included a conversation in which Rodimer “divulges information regarding Tapp’s demise” — that a witness remembered Tapp slipping and falling — after Chesnoff told him their communications were protected.

“Whenever a client asks me if it’s OK to talk on the phone, I always tell them that if the police are silly enough to listen to an attorney-client conversation, they jeopardize their whole case,” Chesnoff said in an interview. “And this time, I didn’t and I wanted to kick myself.”

He added: “It’s frightening to think that people can’t have privileged conversations with lawyers about the most serious issues in their lives.”

Prosecutors said Tapp was initially reported to have fallen in an accident, but homicide detectives became involved in the investigation after his family and friends were suspicious.

Police have said the Clark County coroner’s office ruled Tapp died of blunt force trauma to the head.

Prosecutors say they did not use calls

“The State did not ‘manufacture’ a case from ‘meager’ evidence; it investigated credible reports of a violent beating that resulted in death,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

Prosecutors have already conceded that they will not use the attorney-client communications Rodimer’s attorneys have identified at trial but have cast the issue as “the incidental interception of privileged material during otherwise lawful, judicially authorized surveillance.”

As for the issue of communications covered by marital privilege, they argue that Nevada law governs testimony, but does not restrict wiretap interception.

“The identified attorney-client calls were captured during execution of a court-authorized wiretap supported by probable cause,” wrote Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal in a filing. “They were not used by the prosecution team, generated no derivative evidence, and played no role in charging decisions or trial preparation.”

He also said that prosecutors learned about the issue from the defense.

“We have not listened to anything,” Palal told Jones at a Thursday hearing.

Rodimer’s attorneys have said it was the prosecution that turned over the privileged communication to them.

Chesnoff argued that Metro should have to come to court and explain why protocols for wiretapping were not followed.

“Someone needs to explain how it is that Metro thinks it’s OK to listen to the conversations of a lawyer practicing in this district, jurisdiction for 45 years,” he told the judge. “It’s not as though they didn’t know who they were listening to. And you need to have that on the record and they need to explain so this doesn’t happen again.”

Experts weigh in

Legal experts said calls between an attorney and client are generally protected.

Robert Langford, an experienced defense lawyer and former prosecutor, said police listening to a wiretap are supposed to stop taping as soon as they realize an attorney is talking to their client.

If they listened intentionally, he said, they should be sanctioned.

“I’ll tell you one thing: if the case is dismissed or if a police officer goes to jail, it will never happen again,” Langford said.

Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger, now general counsel for the Las Vegas Police Protective Association union, said if information obtained by a wiretap or search warrant is covered by attorney-client privilege, it should be suppressed.

And if incriminating evidence could be tied to the privileged communication, a judge would have to hold a hearing to determine whether it came from an independent source, he said.

“Once the interceptor knows he’s listening to a conversation between an attorney and a client, he has to stop,” unless he has court permission to intercept the conversation because it is not privileged, said Dominic Gentile, another longtime defense attorney.

At the start of a call with a client, Gentile said he will announce himself and say that the conversation is covered by attorney-client privilege.

“And then I say, ‘So stop listening,’” he said.