Judge refuses to let Gillis attorney withdraw

• By JOE GYAN JR.
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 11, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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An apparent rift has surfaced between the attorneys representing accused Baton Rouge serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis in his capital murder trial.

One of those lawyers, Steven Lemoine, of New Orleans, revealed in court documents that he and Gillis’ lead attorney, Capital Defense Project of Southeast Louisiana director Kerry Cuccia, have a “longstanding’’ conflict.

State District Judge Bonnie Jackson had denied Lemoine’s motion to withdraw as counsel for Gillis, so Lemoine filed a motion Friday asking the judge to reconsider her ruling. She denied that request as well.

Attached to the second motion are affidavits from two Capital Defense Project staff attorneys to support Lemoine’s request.

“Several months ago, I became aware of extreme tensions between Mr. Lemoine and Kerry Cuccia … pertaining to Mr. Lemoine’s complaints regarding the existence of an abusive work environment relative to the erratic behavior of Mr. Cuccia,’’ staff attorney Robert Pastor wrote in one affidavit.

Pastor said Lemoine decided to deal with those issues by resigning from the Capital Defense Project more than two months ago “because the conflicts between himself and Mr. Cuccia could not be resolved.’’

In a second affidavit, staff attorney Eric Hessler said Lemoine told him in private conversations “that he was having extremely serious work related disagreements’’ with Cuccia.

Lemoine and Cuccia both declined comment Tuesday during breaks in jury selection. That process, which is expected to last three weeks, resumes today. It began Monday. No jurors have been seated. Several prospective jurors were excused Tuesday.

Gillis is on trial for first-degree murder in the 2004 strangulation death of 43-year-old Donna Bennett Johnston of Baton Rouge. The state is seeking the death penalty. Johnston’s mutilated body was found in February 2004 in a secluded area off Ben Hur Road.

Gillis has confessed to killing eight south Louisiana women, including Johnston, between 1994 and 2004 and has been booked in seven of those deaths. An investigation into the eighth slaying is ongoing.

Gillis pleaded guilty last summer in West Baton Rouge Parish to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison in the 1999 death of Joyce Williams. She was from Baton Rouge, but authorities said Gillis killed her in a sugarcane field near Port Allen.

Jackson on Tuesday injected a bit of levity into an otherwise tedious, mundane proceeding while she was defining for a panel of 14 prospective jurors the definition of armed robbery and giving examples of dangerous weapons. She said a baseball bat — not just a gun or knife — could fit the definition of such a weapon.

“We don’t normally think of a baseball bat as a dangerous weapon, but the Anteaters probably thought so last night,’’ the judge said, referring to LSU’s 21-7 drubbing of UC Irvine.