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| Hard Rock Cops Want HKS Subpeona Quashed - |
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JoJoe
 Posted:
Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:11 am |
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Hard Rock Cops Want HKS Subpeona Quashed
Bald Truth Exclusive: Seminole Tribe V. Stern? Hard Rock Cops Want HKS Subpeona Quashed
By Art Harris, (c), www.artharris.com, all rights reserved
When Howard K. Stern tried to subpoena all police records related to the death of Anna Nicole Smith in the files of the Seminole Tribe of Hollywood, Florida, he didn’t get very far.
On December 28, the tribe filed an emergency motion –obtained exclusively by The Bald Truth — to quash Stern’s request for records to use in his defamation case against a Texas lawyer who called him a murderer on national TV.
And his lawyer, Lin Wood, learned a quick lesson that classic civil litigation rules rarely apply on tribal lands, where the ex Playboy centerfold died of an accidental overdose at the Hardrock Hotel & Casino in Feb. 2007.
Under federal law, tribes like the Seminoles are treated like sovereign nations, immune from most legal motions, and civil suits, and Florida open records laws don’t apply either.
“This court lacks personal jurisdiction over the Seminole Tribe,” declares the motion to quash Stern’s subpoena, citing legislation dating back to 1934 and upheld by the Supreme Court.
While Stern apparently hoped the subpoena would force the public release of all files from the exhaustive investigation, including any contacts between police and Arthur’s investigators, the tribe’s lawyers balked.
Citing tribal immunity, the motion also says the Seminoles cannot be made to give depositions or hand over files or documents related “to the ongoing criminal investigation of Ms. Smith.”
That brief phrase was a reminder that some aspects of the case remain unresolved, as Virgie Arthur investigators work overtime to fuel suspicions about Stern, according to prosecutors and police who tell me they’ve heard from a former FBI agent who claims new evidence in the case, but has yet to produce any.
Tribal police chief Charlie Tiger, a former homicide detective, has closed his probe into the cause of Smith’s death, ruling out any foul play, while the Broward County Medical examiner, Dr. Joshua Perper, found she’d died accidentally from a toxic mix of prescription drugs, citing the sleeping aid chloral hydrate as the main culprit.
According to law enforcement sources, the so called “on going criminal investigation” cited in the Seminole’s motion to quash involves California’s hard look at the doctors who prescribed Anna Nicole’s medications, for possible medical board violations, or worse.
Those sources say the Seminole police have opened their books to agents with the California Bureau of Narcotics.
Indeed, state drug agents recently obtained search warrants for the homes of two California doctors who treated Anna and her son, Daniel, and have paid visits to the reservation.
Bahamas forensics experts say he died from an accidental overdose of methadone and two anti depressants, according to testimony from his Bahamas inquest in November 2007. Where he got the methadone that killed him remains uncertain, but medical records show he struggled with a valium dependency and was hospitalized for depression two months before he met his mother in the Bahamas.
California laws prohibit physicians from dishing out narcotics to a “known addict,” experts explain, while Florida laws are less strict. Anna Nicole’s friends tell me she had aches and pains from past surgeries, a bad back and other ills that dictated she take a laundry list of meds.
Stern has also filed burglary charges in the Bahamas against South Carolina developer Ford Shelley, who admits taking Anna Nicole’s computers, hard drives, video tapes, paintings she made for her daughter, Dannielynn, and other items from her Horizons home after she died.
Shelley claims she’d asked him to take her personal items and protect them if anything were to happen to her. But friends say she’d broken off their ties after Shelley pressed her to sign a mortgage to Horizons the day after she buried her son, Daniel, friends say.
She refused, claiming the house was a gift from his father in law, Ben Thompson, and refusing to allow Shelley onto the property. Ford’s final smackdown was caught on video tape that aired on FOX News.
Meanwhile, Shelley turned in some of the items he took to the Horry County Sheriff’s department in Myrtle Beach. Seminole police flew in to retrieve the possible evidence, then hit a wall, unable to look into Smith’s computers without a search warrant.
Unable to convince a judge there was probable cause a crime had occurred, they had to do what was unthinkable back then — request permission from the man Virgie suspected of playing a role in her daughter’s death.
When Broward prosecutors asked Stern, he said no problem; they searched Anna’s computers and found nothing to raise suspicions of foul play, nothing to implicate Stern in any way, Florida investigators told me.
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