Apart from the tragedy, the untimely death of Elko District Judge Andrew Puccinelli and his replacement is the latest twist in the Fratto/Patten murder case.
A case that has already seen more twists and turns than any television court room drama.
Fratto and Patten are both accused of the murder of 16 year old Micaela “Mickey” Costanzo march 3.
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Diagnosed earlier this year with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, Puccinelli had not been on the bench since early May and was not expected to make a quick return while he was undergoing treatment for the deadly disease. Indeed one of the last cases he ever heard was the hearing in which the confession of Toni Fratto was released to the court and the public.
Most of his judicial duties were taken up by White Pine District Judges Dan Papez and Steve Dobrescu and senior Judge Norman Robinson.
Of the three Papez was on track to preside over the Toni Fratto trial. The Ely Justice and former White Pine County District Attorney is the scheduled judge for Fratto’s first appearance in District Court this coming Monday. If Puccinelli was still alive but unable to return to the bench it would have most likely been Papez to have heard the case.
However depending on how fast Nevada Governor Bryan Snadoval makes the appointment to replace the judge and just who he picks could change everything.
The leading candidate for the post must be Elko Justice of the Peace Al Kacin should he want it.
Well respected by the local legal community Kacin ran but lost to District Judge Michael Memeo in 2002 and the job could be literally his for the asking.
But should Kacin be appointed his presiding over one or both trials of Fratto and Patten might be contested by one or both of the accused defense teams.
As the Justice of the Peace who remanded both Fratto and Patten to trial the respective defense attorneys could argue that Kacin may not be completely impartial and thus recuse himself from one or both trials.
Even before this latest development there was a great deal of speculation in the legal community that one judge would not preside over both trials.
Apart from time constraints and logistics that also are involved the fact that Kody patten’s Attorneys John Ohlson and Jeffrey Kump may be called in as witnesses for the prosecution in Toni Fratto’s trial.
It was incidentally in that hearing Puccinelli presided that Patten’s Attorneys dropped the bombshell confession of Toni Fratto this May.
In a legal maneuver worthy of silver screen Reno Attorney John Ohlson submitted an audio tape of Toni Fratto admitting to being one of Micaela Costanzo’s killers during a pretrial hearing for his client Kody Patten on May 3rd in Elko district court. Until that moment Patten was the only suspect in the murder that shook Wendover to its very core.
According to the police report of the tape Fratto states that she and Patten drove Costanzo five miles west of Wendover to an NDOT gravel pit. There the couple beat unconscious and then Fratto cut the young girl’s throat with a knife. The two then buried her in a shallow grave and then drove about ten miles past Wendover Utah to burn the knife and Costanzo’s possessions at another gravel pit about 3 miles northeast of Wendover, Utah.
While the confession resulted in the girl’s arrest and remand to trial it is severely at odds with Patten’s confession given six weeks earlier on several key aspects including time, murder weapon and most crucially Fratto’s presence during the murder.
Apart from a cryptic comment his father testified to at his preliminary hearing two weeks ago, Patten makes no mention of Fratto’s presence at the murder in his confession and in fact tells officers that he left the murder scene to pick up “Toni” after the crime had been completed.
Fratto’s attorney contend that their clients confession is false and that she was tricked into making it. For their part Fratto’s lawyers accused Ohlson of blatantly misleading their client and perhaps even violating the attorney rules of conduct.
Ohlson maintains that not only is Fratto telling the truth but that her confession proves that his client should not be charged with first degree murder but only second degree.
The contradictory confessions also mean that the order of the trials is also important. Currently the case against Fratto is first on the judicial calendar, but that placement might change should her attorneys move that she undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
If Patten is convicted at least partly based on his confession first , Fratto might escape a murder charge. If Fratto is convicted first Patten instead of looking at life in prison with no parole could be looking at a 20 year sentence.
All of those question will be answered by a judge to be named later.
