LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Democratic former politician was found guilty of murder on Wednesday by a Nevada jury that decided he’ll serve 20 years to life in prison for killing an investigative journalist who wrote articles critical of his conduct in office two years ago.
Robert Telles hung his head, shaking it slightly from side to side, as his verdict was read in Clark County District Court. Jurors deliberated for nearly 12 hours over three days before their unanimous vote that he ambushed and attacked Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German in a side yard of German’s home.
Telles didn’t speak then or when he learned his sentence but appeared near tears during character witness testimony by his wife, mother and ex-wife. His defense attorney, Robert Draskovich, told reporters outside court that his client plans to appeal.
Telles, 47, was returned in custody to jail, where he has been held without bail since his arrest several days after German’s body was found during Labor Day weekend 2022. His sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 16.
Jessica Coleman, a county employee, was among several co-workers who urged German in 2022 to investigate Telles’ conduct heading the office of unclaimed estate and probate property cases. She sobbed after the verdict was read.
“Finally. Finally,” Coleman said after sitting with other co-workers through trial, which started Aug. 12. “Finally the system is working.”
Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt can invoke sentencing enhancements because the killing was found to be with use of a deadly weapon, willful, deliberate, premeditated, by a person who lay in wait and on a victim 60 years or older. That could raise Telles’ time in prison to a minimum of 21 years and a maximum of 28 years.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said outside the courtroom that he was surprised how long the 12 jurors deliberated before their guilty verdict. He said he believed they carefully considered evidence.
“The jury … hit a home run by getting the right verdict,” he said.
Jurors declined through a court official to speak later with the media. They could have set Telles’ sentence at life without parole.
Wolfson derided as “ludicrous” Telles’ claims that a broad conspiracy of people — including Wolfson — framed him for German’s killing in retaliation for Telles’ effort to root out corruption he saw in his office.
“I am not the kind of person who would stab someone. I didn’t kill Mr. German,” Telles told the jury last week as he ended his rambling narrative from the witness stand. “And that’s my testimony.”
Wolfson, an elected Democrat, said German “had a stellar reputation in this community” and called it “a crying shame, literally and figuratively that he’s no longer with us.”
German, 69, spent 44 years covering crime, courts and corruption in Las Vegas.
In their first public comments since his death, German’s brother, Jay German, and two sisters, Jill Zwerg and Julie Smith, described him as a loving brother and uncle to their children.
“He was the older brother that we all leaned on,” Jay German said. He called the murder “devastating.”
Zwerg said her oldest brother — a dedicated reporter and author who moved to Las Vegas from Milwaukee in 1978 — used to tell her why he rejected offers by other newspapers to move to other cities.
“‘This is Las Vegas, Sin City,’” she said he told her. “‘This is where I need to be.’”
Tears welled in Telles’ eyes as his wife, Mary Ann “Mae” Ismael, took the witness stand and described him as a “great” provider during their 14 years of marriage for their “blended” family of her son, his daughter and their daughter.
“I would love to have the chance for the kids to have their father back” after prison, Ismael said.
Telles’ ex-wife, Tonia Burton, noted the oldest child, a daughter she and Telles have together, is now 16.
His mother, Rosalinda Anaya, said she accepted the verdict but told the jury, “I ask if you could please give my son a chance at parole.”
Telles, an attorney, practiced civil law before he was elected in 2018. He lost his primary for a second elected term after German’s stories appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in May and June 2022.
Prosecutor Christopher Hamner told jurors during closing arguments Monday that Telles blamed German for destroying his career, ruining his reputation and threatening his marriage. He said German fought to the death with his attacker and reminded them that DNA that matched Telles was found beneath German’s fingernails.
Prosecutor Pamela Weckerly presented a timeline and videos showing Telles’ maroon SUV leaving the neighborhood near his home and driving on streets near German’s home about the time German was killed.
The SUV driver was seen wearing a bright orange outfit similar to one worn by a person captured on camera walking to German’s home and slipping into a side yard where German was attacked just after 11:15 a.m.
A little more than two minutes later, the figure in orange wearing a broad straw hat emerged and walked down a sidewalk. German did not reappear.
Evidence showed Ismael sent a text message to her husband about 10:30 a.m. asking, “Where are you?” Prosecutors said Telles left his cellphone at home so he couldn’t be tracked. Telles told the jury he took a walk and then went to a gym in the afternoon.
The jury learned that police found cut-up pieces of a straw hat and athletic shoe at Telles’ house that looked like ones worn by the person wearing the orange shirt. Neither the shirt nor a murder weapon were ever found.
Katherine Jacobsen, U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, issued a statement Wednesday saying the verdict “sends an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated.”
“It is vital that the murder of journalists should be taken seriously and perpetrators held accountable,” Jacobsen said.
German was the only journalist killed in the U.S. in 2022, according to the New York-based committee. The nonprofit has records of 17 media workers killed in the U.S. since 1992.
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Associated Press videographer Ty O’Neil and AP photographer John Locher contributed to this report.