Washington — As the trial into the murder of a Las Vegas investigative journalist got underway this week, defense attorney Robert Draskovich argued in court that “killing a journalist does not kill a story.”
The statement came on the opening day of the trial against Robert Telles. The 47-year-old former Clark County public administrator is accused of murder with a deadly weapon against a victim aged 60 or older.
The victim is Jeff German, a 69-year-old reporter at The Las Vegas Review-Journal, who was found stabbed to death outside his suburban Las Vegas, Nevada, home on September 3, 2022.
Telles has pleaded not guilty.
German had reported on alleged mismanagement in Telles’ office. When Telles later lost a reelection bid in 2022, he posted a letter online in which he attacked the Review-Journal for its coverage.
In court on Wednesday, prosecutors outlined what they have previously said is “overwhelming” evidence against Telles, including that the former public administrator had downloaded images of German’s house onto his work computer and had done research on German’s car. Prosecutors have also previously said that DNA matching that of Telles was found beneath German’s fingernails and on his hands.
“In the end, this case isn’t about politics. It’s not about alleged inappropriate relationships. It’s not about who’s a good boss or who’s a good supervisor or favoritism at work,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Pamela Weckerly said. “It’s just about murder.”
As part of the defense’s argument, Telles’ attorney said that his client did not have a motive to kill German because “killing a journalist does not kill a story.”
Multiple press freedom experts told VOA that line of reasoning stood out to them as shocking — including because it’s factually incorrect, they said.
“That’s absurd. It’s a little preposterous,” Kirstin McCudden, vice president of editorial for Freedom of the Press Foundation, told VOA. “Killing a journalist kills stories. It kills stories every day, all over the world, and it certainly has a chilling effect on any journalist who wants to hold powerful people to account.”
Other press freedom experts agreed.
“It makes no sense. Very often the death of a journalist is the death of a story. No one knows what additional reporting Jeff German could have done if he were still alive,” Clayton Weimers, the head of the U.S. bureau of Reporters Without Borders, told VOA in an email.
In the first week of the trial, three of German’s neighbors testified, including the man who first found German’s body. Other witnesses included detectives, a medical examiner and former associates of the defendant.
Based on surveillance footage, former Metropolitan Police Department homicide detective Cliff Mogg testified that he believed Telles’ vehicle, a maroon Yukon Denali, “was the one used in the commission of Jeffrey German’s murder.”
After German’s killing, police publicized images of the suspect walking on a sidewalk near the reporter’s home and the Denali car driving away.
Real estate agent Zackary Schilling, who helped sell homes through the public administrator’s office and first met Telles in 2020, testified that he recognized the suspect’s walk, his shoes and the vehicle.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hamner asked, “Who was the person you were thinking of?”
“I was thinking of Mr. Telles,” Schilling said. When asked about the suspect’s shoes, Schilling said, “They’re the cheap Nikes he always wore.”
Schilling also testified that he knew about the stories German had written about Telles and that he saw images published in the media of the suspect’s vehicle.
“It just came down my spine,” Schilling said. “I was like holy crap. I didn’t want to believe it, but the facts are the facts. That was Rob Telles’ car.”
The case is the first in U.S. history in which an elected official is accused of murdering an American journalist.
“Understanding that this is believed to be a crime about the work that he was doing is incredibly chilling and scary for journalists,” said McCudden, who is based in New York.
Journalist killings are rare in the United States. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, in New York, 17 journalists and media workers have been killed in the U.S. since the watchdog started keeping records in 1992. Of those, the CPJ has said it believes 15 cases — including German’s — were in relation to the journalist’s work.
And while impunity is high globally — journalist murders go unpunished in nearly 80% of cases around the world, according to the CPJ — pending a verdict in the German case, no journalist murder in the United States that has gone entirely unpunished since the group started keeping track.
Accountability in these cases is especially important because it sends the message that targeting journalists is unacceptable, according to Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S. and Canada program coordinator at the CPJ. Attacks against journalists can also have a chilling effect on other reporters, she said.
“Because of that public face that many journalists have, killing them does have a ripple effect throughout the community,” she told VOA.
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