By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A man convicted in the 1990 shooting death of an FBI special agent has been ordered released from death row in Nevada, KLAS-TV reports.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du said Jose Echavarria must be released within 60 days barring the prosecutors willingness to retry the case.
Du said then-Clark County District Judge Jack Lehman never disclosed his bias, thereby violating the constitutional rights of the defendant.
Echavarria is accused of shooting Special Agent John Bailey in a bank in Las Vegas while the two wrestled for a gun.
Turns out, Judge Lehman had been investigated by Bailey earlier and never disclosed the relationship.
“The evidence submitted by Echavarria shows, beyond any dispute, that Agent Bailey had been centrally involved in conducting the investigation of the trial judge, and that the alleged fraud and the FBI investigation were of such significance that they would have had serious implications for the trial judge,” Du wrote.
