The 1995 murders of Tony Rodriguez and Danielle Wessels were a cold case until a trial and conviction changed that in 2007.
Now theyโre a cold case again.
The Pima County Attorneyโs Office, which won the conviction of Gary Skaggs for the killings, agreed to dismiss that conviction and re-open his case this year, returning it to the Tucson Police Department.
There, the cold case unit is piecing together the remaining evidence against Skaggs, Police Chief Chad Kasmar told me. But now, itโs almost 27 years after the crime and 15 years after the trial. Once Pima County prosecutors have the evidence in hand, they will decide whether to again try this once-solved case, or dismiss it altogether and free Skaggs.
Itโs the effect of having a strengthened โconviction and sentencing integrity unitโ that looks back at some old cases and reconsiders whether the outcomes were just. These units are increasingly common in prosecutorsโ offices around the United States, especially in the places where criminal-justice reform candidates, such as Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, have won elections.
The argument for them is straightforward โ not every injustice can be cleared up in court, and a prosecutorโs office should be willing to fix its own mistakes in the service of justice. These may well apply in the Skaggs case.
What worries me is twofold: It takes a lot of time and effort for police and prosecutors to reconsider years-old cases while murders are piling up again at a record pace in Tucson. Also, Iโm not sure this county attorneyโs office is adversarial enough in questioning defense claims of injustice.
Kasmar said he supports the idea of conviction integrity units but worries about their impact on his shrinking departmentโs workload.
โItโs a massive heavy lift for us in a time when every major city in the country, almost without exception, is experiencing record high homicide numbers,โ Kasmar said. โAs the chief, protecting my staff, I want to be sure that she (Conover) is recognizing how her unitโs decision-making will impact not just my department but any department.โ
Charges took 11 years
Somebody beat and slashed Wessels and Rodriguez to death in the early morning hours of Aug. 25, 1995. Their 6-month-old baby, Alexis, was in the house with them at the time and survived. They were in the home they shared, in the 2100 block of North Columbus Boulevard.
Police attention quickly turned to Skaggs, who, though more than a decade older, was in the same circle of neighbors and friends, some of them drug users. But they were unable to gather enough evidence to arrest him.
At the time, Det. Joe Godoy was TPDโs lead investigator in the case, which became an issue later, when he was repeatedly charged with perjury and accused of lying during a murder trial. Those charges never stuck, but Godoyโs work was tainted.
In 2006, Tucsonโs cold case detectives finally decided they had enough evidence. People he knew said Skaggs had admitted committing the murder, because he was angry that his girlfriend had an affair with Rodriguez. Also, a machete in his house was a possible match to the murder weapon.
Skaggs
But there was no DNA, no clear physical evidence, no eyewitness to the crime.
Jurors deliberated for only 90 minutes before arriving at the verdict, and Skaggs was sentenced to two life sentences. He always denied his guilt, though.
Could have been a hung jury
Ralph Raub was on that jury. He recalled to me Tuesday that he and other jurors were swayed by the testimony of Dr. Cynthia Porterfield, the forensic pathologist from the Pima County Medical Examinerโs office called by prosecutors to testify.
Porterfield was not the pathologist who had conducted the autopsy, and she testified that the machete was not necessarily the murder weapon but could have been. Raub told me that jurors thought โthe probability of that was high,โ although there was no DNA evidence or other direct link between the murders and the blade.
โWhat turned the corner for me was when the defendant presented his witnesses, it made him sound even more guilty,โ Raub said. โIf the defendant had not said a thing and had not called any witnesses, it probably would have been a hung jury.โ
This comment piqued my interest, because the basic reason prosecutors gave for setting aside Skaggsโ convictions in March was โineffective assistance of counsel.โ Gabriel โJackโ Chin, who heads the conviction and sentencing integrity unit, said trial attorney Michael Lange failed to adequately question Porterfieldโs testimony, interview the pathologist who actually conducted the autopsy, and bring up the credibility issues surrounding Godoy, who testified at the trial, though he was no longer with TPD.
โIt was not presented to the jury as this or millions of other things could be the murder weapon,โ Chin said during a March 25 court hearing. โInstead the deputy county attorney carefully went through each wound on both victims and asked if the wounds were consistent with this weapon. It created the impression that Dr. Porterfield was matching the weapon to the wounds.โ
If Godoyโs credibility had been questioned, Chin said, jurors โmight well have thought that all of the evidence in the case that he had a hand in was suspect, and he had a hand in almost all the evidence in the case.โ
โYou canโt just accept what a defense attorney tells youโ
Skaggsโ attorneys, Amy Armstrong of the Arizona Capital Representation Project and Ralph Ellinwood, have brought up all these arguments in court before. There was a four-day evidentiary hearing in 2016, for example. After that, Pima County Superior Court Judge Javier Chon-Lopez ruled Lange was โreasonably competent,โ which is the legal standard for sufficient representation.
But Armstrong and Ellinwood have not given up. Theyโve gone up and down the court system arguing not just that Skaggs was poorly represented but also that he is actually innocent, and another man is guilty. About a year ago, they sent their case to the conviction and sentencing integrity unit.
Chin did not accept their whole argument, saying in March, โHe might be innocent, but we believe there is some evidence of guilt.โ Skaggs was released from prison and put in the Pima County jail as investigators dig into the evidence. At first, the prosecution was given 90 days to decide whether to retry Skaggs, but now they have until Aug. 29.
By email I asked the head of Pima Countyโs first conviction-integrity unit, retired prosecutor Rick Unklesbay, what he thought of the officeโs logic in its filings and statements in the Skaggs case. Unklesbay, who left the office in early 2021 after a conflict with Conover, was unimpressed.
โIt is imperative for the prosecutor to have the witness describe the wounds in detail in a murder case,โ said Unklesbay, who has tried many murder cases. โAny connection to the potential murder weapon, even if not known for sure, allows the jury to fully consider the evidence. Iโve done the same many times, and it is admissible and relevant.โ
He went on: โWe know statistically there are innocent people in prison. A good CIU (conviction integrity unit) should work to resolve those cases. But it takes some prosecutorial experience to do that. You canโt just accept what a defense attorney tells you.โ
A natural focus for Conover
Of course, Chin and his staff arenโt simply accepting the defenseโs word, but his office is probably more inclined to consider and accept cases from defendants who say they have been unjustly sentenced or convicted than Unklesbay was.
In a written statement, office spokesman C.T. Revere said under former County Attorney Barbara LaWall, the unit was formed but barely staffed.
โThis administrationโs new unit continues to grow what is now the Conviction and Sentencing Integrity Unit from there as a direct result of community demand, with two full-time attorneys and a full-time paralegal with consultation from our Detectiveโs Unit,โ he said.
Theyโve considered and closed more than 20 cases in a year and a half, and have another 50-plus open, Revere said in the statement. This is a natural focus for Conover, a career defense attorney before she became county attorney, and for Chin, a steadfast supporter of criminal-justice reform policies.
The Skaggs case doesnโt strike me as a misuse of the office, because his attorneys have made a good argument. But it still brings up the dangers in these offices โ reviving closed cases and asking them to be rebuilt demands a lot from investigators and witnesses.
And a prosecutor who is either inexperienced or not adversarial enough may be vulnerable to accepting cases better left resolved.
