Dec 05, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

Attorneys representing one of three gay men charged with obstruction of justice in the murder of Washington attorney Robert Wone are denouncing police and prosecutors for allegedly spreading “speculation, innuendo, assumptions, and irrelevant inflammatory comments” linking the men to the murder.

The comments came in a motion the attorneys filed Nov. 25 to request the release of defendant Dylan Ward on his own recognizance.

It also came the same day that Katherine Wone, Robert Wone’s widow, filed a $20 million wrongful death suit against Ward and co-defendants Joseph Price and Victor Zaborsky.

Ward’s attorneys filed the motion before D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg during Ward’s arraignment Nov. 25. The arraignment came after authorities returned Ward to D.C. from Florida, where he was arrested and held without bail since Oct. 29. Weisberg released Ward on a special, supervised-release arrangement similar to the arrangement for last month’s release of Price and Zaborsky following their arrest and arraignment on obstruction of justice charges.

Wone, whose family members say he was straight and happily married, was Price’s friend since the two attended the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Family members said that on the night of his murder, Wone had worked late at his office and was spending the night at the home of Price, Zaborsky and Ward. Price and Zaborsky are domestic partners.

It was not clear whether the filing of Katherine Wone’s lawsuit on the same day that Ward’s attorneys filed their motion attacking the government’s case against the three men was coincidental or intentional.

“This lawsuit is based on defendants’ intentional, reckless, and/or negligent acts that caused the death of Robert Wone,” the lawsuit states.

It adds that the lawsuit is based on “defendants’ negligent failure to rescue Robert Wone after he was injured, defendants’ destruction of evidence of Robert Wone’s murder, and defendants’ conspiracy to destroy evidence and obstruct the police investigation into Robert Wone’s murder.”

The lawsuit notes that its allegations are largely based on information recently released by D.C. police and the U.S. Attorneys office through a detailed, 14-page affidavit supporting the arrests of Price, Zaborsky, and Ward on the obstruction of justice charge related to Wone’s murder.

The motion seeking Ward’s release on his own recognizance disputes the allegations outlined in the affidavit.

“Frustrated at its inability to determine how Wone died, the government’s logically-flawed affidavit argues that since the police were unable to identify a third-party ‘intruder’ responsible for Wone’s death, then all three defendants must know more than they are telling, must have tampered with the crime scene, and must have lied to the police,” the motion says.

“Without distinguishing among the three defendants, and without specifically attributing any illegal action to any of the three men, the government tosses them all into the affidavit and grossly assumes that they must have done something to obstruct justice,” the motion says. “Lacking evidence that any of the three men had anything to do with Wone’s death, the government relies on rank speculation in an attempt to make its case.”

The motion criticizes Assistant U.S. Attorney Glen Kirshner, the lead prosecutor in the case, for unnecessarily having Ward arrested in Florida and held in custody by U.S. Marshals.

According to the motion, Ward’s attorney, David Schertler, offered to arrange for Ward to return to Washington to surrender once the government decided to arrest him on the obstruction of justice charge.

“By arresting Ward in Florida and keeping him incarcerated for weeks before a detention hearing, the government’s improper and obvious goal was to put pressure on Ward (who has never before been arrested and has no criminal record) to give the government information it believes would incriminate his codefendants,” the motion says. “Through counsel, Ward has repeatedly told the government that he has no such information.”

Channing Phillips, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office, said the government would respond to the allegations in Ward’s motion at the appropriate time in its own court filing.

“As for the allegations contained in the affidavit, the affidavit speaks for itself,” Phillips said.

The lengthy affidavit notes that an autopsy report shows that Wone was “restrained, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, and murdered” inside the home where the three men lived at 1509 Swann St., N.W. It says evidence shows it would be highly unlikely that an intruder committed the murder, as Price, Zaborsky and Ward have claimed.

In addition to lead defense attorney David Schertler, another attorney whose name appears on Ward’s pretrial release motion is Robert Spagnoletti, the gay former D.C. Attorney General who served under former Mayor Anthony Williams.

Spagnoletti’s addition to the defense team ...