Gag order issued in double homicide case against 8-year-old

ST. JOHNS - With last weeks double homicide capturing headlines across the nation, Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Roca brought most of it to an end Monday by issuing a gag order in the criminal proceedings against an 8-year-old boy accused of killing his father and another man.


The gag order was processed and issued Monday morning while several hundred mourners filled St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, inside and out, to pay their final respects to Vincent Romero, 29, who died last Wednesday from gunshot wounds allegedly inflicted by his son.
The gag order directs all those involved in prosecuting or defending the case, law enforcement, child protective services, probation and detention agencies, and the attorney general's office, "... cease immediately from disseminating any information, views, predictions or commentary regarding this case." Roca said he believed the gag order was necessary because he is also hearing a custody matter concerning the boy and he doesn't want the case contaminated with inaccurate rumor and speculation.
Roca allowed two attorneys who represent news organizations in the Phoenix area to participate telephonically in a Monday afternoon status hearing. Attorneys Daniel Barr with Phoenix law firm Perkins Coie Brown & Bain, and David Bodney with Steptoe & Johnson, asked the judge on behalf of their media clients to reconsider and modify the gag order believing the order "swept too broadly."
"One of my concerns has to do with the potential contamination of the dependency proceedings by essentially loose cannon pronouncements by various individuals quoted at length and in detail and with a substantial lack of accuracy as far as what is happening and what is going to happen and their effect on those dependency proceedings," said Roca. "I was surprised this morning to find that the proceedings in this court were being described inaccurately on National Public Radio, if you can believe it, by way of quoting The Today Show."
St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick appeared on The Today Show in a live interview Monday morning with show host Meredith Vieira.
After listening to the attorneys present their opinions on why the judge should reconsider the gag order, Roca told them the order will stay in place as written. He said if they want to further pursue the matter, they can submit their motions in writing for his future consideration.
The court's attention then turned to other matters concerning the 8-year-old. Roca clarified his earlier order for a psychological evaluation, "...a comprehensive evaluation, both competency and mental state at the time of the events in question."
The 8-year-old was in the courtroom throughout the proceedings, seated between attorney Benjamin Brewer and mother Eryn Thomas. Thomas and Romero were divorced; Romero had full custody of his son. Thomas lives in Mississippi and flew in the day after the homicides to be near her son.
Romero and his co-worker and border Tim Romans were found dead at the family home last Wednesday afternoon.
Twenty-four hours later, police believed they had solved the case and arrested the 8-year-old. He has since been charged with two counts of premeditated murder in the county's juvenile division.
In news reports, Brewer has said police overstepped their boundaries in interviewing the third-grader, not allowing him legal representation or a parent to be present when they interviewed him last Thursday morning. During a Friday detention hearing, police said they originally thought the boy was a victim - that he had returned home after school and found his father and Romans dead. They said it wasn't until over 90 percent of the interview was finished that they realized they didn't have a victim, but instead they had a suspect. Police said during the interview, the boy admitted to having fired the gun that killed the two men.
"He had no record of any kind, not even a disciplinary record at school," Carlyon said of the boy in a Friday press release. "He has never been in trouble before."
In the Friday detention hearing, Roca ruled that probable cause existed to believe the boy committed the crimes he is charged with. He also ruled that the boy remain in the detention facility pending further proceedings.

Boy, 8, accused of killing two
- Posted 11/11/2008, 6:00 a.m.
ST. JOHNS - Rocked by a double murder in their small close-knit community last Wednesday afternoon, the residents of St. Johns have only one question on their minds. Why would an eight-year-old boy allegedly kill two men, one of whom was his father?
The 8-year-old was charged on Friday with two counts of first degree murder. The charges allege the boy acted with premeditation to kill his father, Vincent Romero, 29, of St. Johns, and his friend and boarder, Tim Romans, 39, of San Carlos.
Dressed in a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, shackle chains dragging on the floor, the youngster was led into the courtroom by detention officials for the 3 p.m. Friday hearing where a judge was to decide if the 8-year-old should remain in custody or be released to family members. Sitting next to his attorney at the table reserved for defendants, in a chair normally occupied by an adult, the youngster's feet didn't touch the floor.
After working through some procedural issues with the attorneys, superior court Judge Michael Rocca read the youngster his Miranda rights, putting the very specific legal verbiage into words the 8-year-old could understand. "The charges against you, as I've indicated, are very serious," Rocca told the boy. "There is a request that you be detained in the juvenile detention facility, down on Main Street, during the remainder of these proceedings. The hearing today is to determine whether or not it is reasonable to believe you did what you are charged with - not sufficient proof to hold you responsible, but reason to believe and be concerned that you have done what you are charged with." When Rocca asked the young defendant if he understood what he had just heard, the boy indicated he did.
With that, the judge called on Prosecutor Brad Carlyon to call his witnesses. He first called St. Johns Detective Debbie Neckel to the stand. She said she and St. Johns Sgt. Lucas Rodriquez were first to arrive at the Romero residence that afternoon, having been dispatched to investigate a report of a body. She said upon arrival at the two-story home, she saw what appeared to be a man's body lying on the front porch. While Neckel stayed outside with a couple neighbors and the 8-year-old boy she later learned lived in the house, Rodriguez entered the home to clear it of any additional subjects. She said Rodriquez located a second deceased male on the stairs inside the home.
In response to questions from Carlyon, Neckel said she and Apache County Sheriff's Cmdr. Matrese Avila interviewed the youngster the following morning. She said the boy initially told them he got off the school bus and walked around the neighborhood before going home. As he approached the home, he told the officers he saw a body on the front porch and then went inside and called for his dad before seeing his dad's body lying on the stairs. "He said he stayed there for 30 minutes and then he left the residence and went to a neighbor's house where there is another young man. He spoke to him and told him his father was dead and his father's friend was dead," said Neckel.
She said the boy's story changed with every question the officers asked. She said they discussed gun shot residue in words the youngster could understand, and they asked him if he would have any on his clothing - the boy acknowledged that he may have some on his clothing. "He said when he entered the house there was a lot of smoke in the house. He also told us that he did pick up the gun, and that the smoke would have caused (residue) to be on his clothing. We asked if he would have a little or a lot, he said a lot." She said he then admitted that he may have fired the gun.
"Did you ask him if he might have been mad at his dad," asked Carlyon. Neckel said the boy admitted he was mad at his dad. "He said that the evening before, he didn't bring some papers home from school and his dad was very angry and had (the boy's) stepmother spank him five swats."
Defense attorney Ben Brewer further questioned the officer about the crime scene - much of his questioning concerned what individuals were at the crime scene, what were they doing there, and how the crime scene evidence was collected. Neckel named the officers who she was aware entered the home. She told Brewer that all of the evidence from the crime scene was collected by Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab technicians.
Neckel said neither she nor Avila, a certified forensic interviewer, read the boy his Miranda rights. "We felt he was a victim. I would say that in 90 percent of that interview I felt he was a victim." She said it was just in the last few minutes of their conversation with the boy that she and Avila began to believe the boy was not a victim, but something different.
Carlyon next called Sgt. Rodriquez to the stand. He told the court he observed the body on the front porch and believed the person (Romans) was dead. He said he entered the home, quickly searched it for any additional subjects and found a second dead body (Romero) laying face down on the stairs. Carlyon handed the witness several crime scene photographs from which he asked a series of questions concerning the exact location of the bodies, shell casings and other evidence the officer noticed at the scene. Rodriquez said from the shell casings he found near the bodies, he believed the murder weapon was a 22-caliber weapon. Police later located a 22-caliber rifle a couple feet inside the front door - he described the rifle as a single-shot bolt-action rifle. In talking to the boy's grandmother, he said he learned she had originally purchased the gun for her son, and he in turn gave it to his son. "She said (her grandson) knew how to use it." Rodriquez said he learned the Romero family members were hunters and had many guns in the home, mostly stored in the master bedroom.
As to who may have called 911, Rodriquez said he understood the 8-year-old went to his friend's home nearby and told the friend his dad and his dad's friend were dead. Rodriquez believes the friend told the story to a teenage sibling who in turn called their father at work. The father returned home within minutes, saw what appeared to be a body on the front porch of the Romero home and called 911.
Rodriquez admitted it was difficult to talk about some of the things he saw that afternoon at the Romero home.
The final officer to take the stand was Apache County Sheriff's Sgt. Web Hogle. He said his involvement occurred the following day when he relieved another deputy who had retained the chain of custody of the bodies throughout the night at a nearby funeral home. He testified that although the bodies were still fully clothed, he was able to observe what appeared to be 22-caliber pin-point size holes in several locations on their clothing.
Hogle said several members of the Romans family arrived at the funeral home while he was there. He pulled a couple family members aside in an attempt to calm them down, and it was during that time that Romans' wife said her husband called her right after he got home from work. While discussing work and other topics with her husband, she told the officer she could hear the 8-year-old boy in the background yelling at her husband, "Tim, I need you to come in here, something's wrong with dad. Tim, come in the house, something's wrong." Hogel said Ms. Romans insisted the officers talk to the youngster - "He knows something; he was there when something bad happened to my husband. Make sure that they talk to him about this." Ms. Romans said the last thing her husband said to her was that the Romero youngster said something was wrong and he needed to go look into it.
After 4-1/2 hours of testimony, Rocca said he found probable cause that the boy was involved in the crimes he is charged with and ordered that he be detained in the Apache County juvenile detention center for the time being. He ordered a psychiatric evaluation be initiated and requested that child protective services begin an investigation with an eye to future dependency hearings.