July 29th, 2010
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Author: Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 8:04 PM Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 8:04 PM
An attorney for Stephen Nodine on Thursday asked a U.S. District Court judge to put a federal firearms case on hold until after the former Mobile County commissioner goes to trial on a murder charge.
Nodine stands accused of the Mother’s Day shooting death of Angel Downs, a Gulf Shores real estate professional with whom he was having an affair. He also faces a charge of being an unlawful drug user in possession of a firearm.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sonja Bivins earlier this month agreed to delay the gun case a month and set it for trial in September, but would not wait for the murder case to be resolved.
Gordon Armstrong, Nodine’s lawyer in the gun case, asked U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade to overturn Bivins’ ruling.
Federal prosecutors have said they plan to hold Nodine accountable for the homicide at sentencing if they win conviction on the gun charge. That would likely mean he’d be sentenced to the maximum 10-year prison term.
If Nodine is forced to defend the gun charge first, Armstrong wrote, “the defendant will effectively be deprived of the option to testify or present a proper defense” because “any evidence he introduces can be used against him in the state proceeding.”
Armstrong also wrote that the current trial schedule would make it impossible for his client to consider a plea bargain because any admission of guilt to the gun charge could be used against him in the murder trial.
“Further, a trial and conviction on the federal gun charge prior to the trial of his murder case will generate additional publicity, as has been clearly demonstrated by the inordinate and prejudicial coverage of defendant’s arrest” and other proceedings, Armstrong wrote.
Prosecutors cite the Speedy Trial Act, which they contend prohibits an indefinite delay of a federal trial.
“It is not uncommon for a defendant charged in two jurisdictions to be required to make difficult choices, and such circumstances do not offend any particular rights of any such defendant,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gloria Bedwell wrote in response to Armstrong’s original argument to the magistrate judge.
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