Attorneys for 'Street Shooter' suspect seek to bar death penalty after jailhouse video

The Republic | azcentral.com

Aaron Saucedo, the man police have accused of being Phoenix's "Serial Street Shooter."

Attorneys for suspected "Serial Street Shooter" Aaron Saucedo on Thursday filed a motion to bar the possibility of a death penalty in his trial because the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office provided video of Saucedo in his jail cell to The Arizona Republic and other media outlets.

Saucedo is charged in nine murders that took place in 2015 and 2016. In January, The Republic's website, azcentral.com, posted video of Saucedo in a small anteroom to his cell in a maximum security unit of the Fourth Avenue Jail. In the video clip, Saucedo can be seen talking on a telephone and looking out a cell-door window.

At least two other local TV stations requested the same video after the azcentral.com story appeared.

In Thursday's motion, Saucedo's lead attorney, Thomas Glow, asks Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Cunanan to throw out the state's intent to seek the death penalty as a sanction for violating Saucedo's constitutional rights.

"Releasing videotape of Mr. Saucedo in his cell violates his right to due process of law, his right to bodily privacy, and to be free from unreasonable search and seizures, and his right to counsel," Glow wrote.

Glow claimed the release of the video violated Saucedo's rights under the Fourth, Sixth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution.

"Allowing anyone who asks to observe Mr. Saucedo while he is in the privacy of his cell — where he sleeps, eats, showers, and does all manner of things humans do in the privacy of their home — treats him as a monkey in a zoo and demeans his humanity, the process, and the court," he wrote.

The video in question comes from security cameras placed outside cells in the maximum security unit. Purportedly there is no accompanying audio.

Glow asked the court to order that "the state" disclose who received the video, to prevent such further releases, to return the tapes to the court where they should be sealed, to keep the state from viewing Saucedo's visitor log and to dismiss the intent to seek the death penalty as punishment.

In criminal cases, the term "state" is used to refer to police and prosecutors. It does not differentiate between the two. Allegations of prosecutorial misconduct can extend to actions taken by law enforcement working on the case.

The release of the videos came about in response to an instance last year in which jail personnel had provided surveillance video to a court-appointed psychologist trying to prove that a jail prisoner was competent to stand trial. The video included footage of the inmate meeting with his attorney and other members of his legal team.

In November, when that inmate's attorney objected in court, a deputy Maricopa County attorney defended the action by saying the video was not protected by the Constitution.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told The Republic the video was public record. And so to test that contention, The Republic requested video of Saucedo, who has so far waived his presence at court hearings so that he does not become recognizable to the general public. Part of his defense strategy will depend on identification: the Serial Street Shooter struck after dark, and few of his surviving victims got a good look at him.

The Serial Street Shootings began in August 2015 and ended in July 2016. They occurred mostly in the Maryvale neighborhood of west Phoenix, although some of the attacks took place in east-central Phoenix. Saucedo was not arrested until May 2017.

He is charged with 22 felonies in two separate indictments.

One of the cases contains a single charge of first-degree murder, that of the boyfriend of Saucedo's mother, who was killed in 2015. The other indictment covers the other eight murders, and the County Attorney's Office has filed its intent to seek the death penalty in those eight murders.

The two cases will be tried separately.

His next court date is scheduled for March 20.