 Ricky Weaver (Photo: Mountain Home News)
Weaver was placed in the Elmore County Jail and held for 20 hours prior to being transported to the jail in Owyhee County, where the domestic-violence charge had been filed.
Nearly two months later, on December 20, 2018, Weaver was charged with solicitation to commit murder, after Michael Wallace, another person at the Elmore jail, said that Weaver had offered to pay him $2,000 to kill M.K.
Weaver’s solicitation trial in Elmore County District Court began on March 5, 2020, with Judge James Cawthon presiding. Elmore County Prosecutor Daniel Page represented the state. John DeFranco represented Weaver.
Outside the jury’s presence, Judge Cawthon held a hearing to determine the range of M.K.’s testimony and the extent that DeFranco could cross-examine her about any credibility issues she might have. M.K. testified that in 2018, Weaver had repeatedly threatened to harm her if he lost custody of A.W., his daughter with his ex-wife. M.K. said this became a greater concern after Weaver was arrested on the domestic-violence charge in late November. Page said M.K.’s testimony was probative of Weaver’s intent, and Judge Cawthon allowed M.K. to testify before the jury.
There, M.K. testified about her relationship with Weaver, who was also the father of her daughter. M.K. testified, as she had at the hearing, that Weaver was worried that the domestic-violence charge might jeopardize his custody of his other daughter, A.W.
M.K. said that Weaver “told me if he ever lost custody of A.W., he would have me killed.”
Wallace testified that he and Weaver were briefly housed together in the same pod at the jail when another person at the jail introduced the two men. Page asked if Weaver asked Wallace to do anything inappropriate. Wallace said: “He had asked me to murder his—I don’t know if it’s his wife or the mother of his child.” Wallace testified that he told Weaver he had a brother in Chicago, which the state said implied that Wallace indicated he could get the job done.
Wallace also testified that Weaver had mentioned a 1992 white Honda Accord, which Weaver owned but M.K. drove.
Wallace testified that Weaver gave him instructions on how to find M.K. He said that Weaver first wrote down the instructions but became concerned that the information was in his handwriting. That note was flushed down the toilet, and Wallace said that with Weaver’s help he drew a map on a napkin. The napkin was admitted into evidence.
Wallace testified that he quickly reached out to deputies at the jail, because he was concerned “about a young lady whose life may be at harm.” He didn’t get a response, so he sent a second message to deputies the next day, after Weaver was transferred.
Wallace had been charged with felony burglary, but after Weaver’s arrest, he was allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanor burglary. Wallace said he received a “deal,” but it wasn’t quite as sweet as he had anticipated based on the amount of time served prior to the plea.
Deputy Zachary Parlin testified that he interviewed Wallace twice—on November 29, 2018, and December 19, 2018—about his statements implicating Weaver.
John Myers testified that he overheard Weaver threaten M.K. and heard Weaver and Wallace discuss “hiring someone to hit—you know—off his wife or girlfriend.” Myers also said he saw the two men writing on a napkin.
James Carney testified that Weaver “said that he was interested in finding somebody to put a hit on his girlfriend.”
Richard Cage testified that he heard Weaver say something disparaging about someone over the telephone. He said he later heard Weaver say he wished that person was dead.
Willie Rabey, who was with Weaver in the Owyhee County Jail, testified that Weaver “was talking about when he was in Elmore County, he had talked to another inmate about murdering his ex.”
Weaver’s ex-wife, known as S.H., testified that Weaver called her on June 19, 2018.
“[He] asked if I knew anybody who would crack [M.K]’s f’ing skull,” she testified. “I said, ‘No.’ He asked if I would do it. I absolutely said, ‘No.’ Offered to pay me. Offered to pay me two more times during this conversation to do so.” S.H.’s fiancé testified that he overheard this conversation because S.H. had put the call on speakerphone and asked him to listen.
Weaver’s attorney sought to introduce testimony from Michael Dean, who said he had spoken with Wallace about the alleged incident involving Weaver. Outside the presence of the jury, Dean said that Wallace told him in February 2019 that Weaver asked Wallace for help in repossessing his Honda, going so far as to draw them a map. According to Dean, Wallace said that he and Myers “destroyed that map that [Weaver] gave them and they made a new one with [M.K.’s] name and her age, and they was going to turn it into the DA to try to get a deal. This map was going to be like for a [murder for hire].”
Dean’s out-of-court testimony was at times confusing. He didn’t appear to have his dates correct, and he said he didn’t contact the police because “It’s none of my business, and, who knows, it probably wasn’t—it probably ain’t true anyways.” Judge Cawthon excluded the testimony as hearsay.
Weaver testified in his own defense and said he had not solicited Wallace to kill M.K. “I was upset because [M.K.] had stole[n] my car against my will,” he said.
Weaver’s mother also testified and said that her son called her from jail and asked her to get the Honda. She said she was unable to get the police to help but later bought the car from Weaver and took possession of the vehicle.
The jury convicted Weaver of solicitation to commit murder on March 6, 2020. He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Weaver appealed, arguing that Judge Cawthon had erred in excluding Dean’s testimony. The appeal said Dean’s testimony about Wallace’s motives fell within the “state of mind” exception to the hearsay rule. The state responded that the testimony didn’t meet that exception; it wasn’t about Wallace’s state of mind, but rather his state of memory, several months after Wallace and Weaver were together in the Elmore County jail.
On August 23, 2022, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed Weaver’s solicitation conviction, ruling that Judge Cawthon had properly excluded Dean’s testimony.
At the time of the solicitation trial, Weaver had also been charged with three counts of rape, for alleged assaults that M.K. said occurred in February, May, and October of 2018. The resolution of that case had been delayed pending the resolution of the solicitation case.
On April 21, 2021, while the appeal in the solicitation case was under review, Weaver’s attorney on the rape charges received a disclosure that Page had found 1,189 pages of records on Parlin’s computer based on data extracted from Weaver’s cellphone. The attorney, John Kormanik, later received a copy of the search warrants, prepared by Page, seeking authorization to seize and search the device. Parlin had ordered the extraction on December 27, 2018.
The cellphone extraction contained numerous texts and photos between M.K. and Weaver that portrayed a more complex relationship than her testimony indicated and undermined the state’s presentation of her as a victim of abuse. In addition, when Weaver reviewed the records, he realized that files—particularly photos of M.K. in provocative poses—had been deleted.
On June 18, 2021, Weaver, represented by Nathan Olsen, filed a motion for post-conviction relief. The motion, later amended on January 7, 2022, said the state had failed to disclose a wide range of exculpatory evidence. In addition to the undisclosed cellphone files, the state had also failed to disclose a recording of a jailhouse phone conversation between Weaver and his mother at 3:51 p.m. on November 29, 2018. The timing was important, as Wallace had testified that he and Weaver discussed the “hit” between 3 and 3:30 that day. On the call, Weaver said he only had $50 and never asked his mother for additional money. He asked his mother to change the garage code, so M.K. couldn’t access the area, and to get the Honda back from M.K. In addition, Weaver asked his mother to “look past her hatred” and “be nice” to M.K.
The motion also said the state had tampered with files by deleting pictures from Weaver’s cellphone and had lost audio recordings of Parlin’s interview with Wallace and a separate interview with Weaver.
In addition, the motion said that DeFranco had been ineffective in representing Weaver, failing to follow through on his client’s request to recover the cellphone and to review records that impeached M.K.
Judge Cawthon held several days of evidentiary hearings.
Page, who had resigned in 2022, testified that he knew Weaver’s phone had been seized pursuant to the warrant. But he denied any knowledge of the extraction and said he would not have expected an extraction in this case. (The search warrant requested an extraction.)
Page also testified that he had listened to a “couple” of Weaver’s jailhouse phone calls, but not the one where he talked with his mother. He also acknowledged that he had hundreds of Weaver’s calls in his files.
The rape charges and related cases against Weaver had been dismissed in early 2022, shortly after Olsen filed his initial motion for post-conviction relief. Page testified that he dismissed those charges because Weaver was already serving time on the solicitation conviction.
Parlin testified that it was his practice to record witness and defendant interviews. He said he didn’t know what happened to the recordings of his interviews with Wallace and Weaver.
Parlin had other issues with handling evidence. He left Weaver’s cellphone lying on a desk. An evidence technician in the sheriff’s office testified that she found a box containing a large amount of undisclosed evidence when she was cleaning out a closet in Parlin’s office. In 2023, she found a police report from the case and emailed the prosecutor’s office, writing: “I have nightmares about this. Ugh.”
DeFranco testified at the hearing. He said that the undisclosed evidence would have made a difference in how he defended Weaver. He also admitted not reading a report about M.K. given to him the day before the trial started. The report said in part that M.K. “has deliberately destroyed her own credibility by writing letters confessing to submitting false police reports relating to Ricky Weaver.”
On May 23, 2024, Judge Cawthon vacated Weaver’s conviction and granted him a new trial.
Judge Cawthon wrote, “Detective Parlin’s handling of Weaver’s cases was more than just mere sloppiness. He did not comply with the chain of custody procedures, failed to log evidence and lost recordings of the defendant and witnesses. While not all the undisclosed evidence was necessarily favorable, the sheer amount of evidence that was not disclosed is shocking.”
The ruling also sharply criticized Page for his failure to disclose evidence about the cellphone and the jailhouse calls and his testimony about his actions on these issues. “The notion that Page was unaware of the cellphone extraction is not credible,” the ruling said. “His office prepared the warrant to search Weaver’s house and included a provision to allow the State to search the contents of digital evidence.”
The ruling said Page’s explanation for dismissing the rape charges was not credible. “It is a reasonable inference that after the disclosure of the extraction, along with other evidence casting doubt on M.K.’s credibility, he was forced to dismiss the case,” the ruling said.
Judge Cawthon also said that DeFranco had provided ineffective representation. DeFranco didn’t follow through on Weaver’s request to find his cellphone, and he missed the warning flags indicating potential disclosure problems, instead trusting in Page’s assurances that all the evidence had been disclosed. In addition, DeFranco failed to investigate M.K.’s credibility, which would have uncovered significant impeachment evidence.
“The evidence of guilt in this case was not overwhelming,” Judge Cawthon wrote. “Although there was jail footage showing Weaver talking with Wallace, it did not contain audio. The napkin with map and [M.K.’s] name was written by Wallace and not Weaver. There is no audio of Weaver soliciting [M.K.’s] murder. No money ever exchanged hands; no money was ever put on Weaver or Wallace’s books. Wallace had a motive to fabricate the story to bargain for a reduction in his own potential sentence. Therefore, the additional evidence showing Weaver had no motive to kill [M.K.] casts doubt on Wallace’s testimony.”
Weaver was released from prison on June 4, 2024. The state dismissed the charge on August 21, 2024.
– Ken Otterbourg
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