The attorney for a former Waco-area minister charged in his wife’s death is asking a judge to sanction McLennan County prosecutors for what he claims are legal and ethical breaches in their alleged efforts to interrogate his client and get a DNA sample without first contacting the attorney.

Richard Ellison, of Kerrville, Texas, claims in a motion filed Monday that prosecutors from McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest’s office violated defendant Matt Baker’s rights to have a lawyer present during questioning, to be free of unreasonable search and seizure and against self-incrimination.

The attorney also alleges that prosecutors violated legal and ethical canons by sending an investigator to the county jail twice last week to question Baker without his lawyer present and to try to obtain a DNA sample.

ABOVE: Former Waco-area pastor Matt Baker (above) stands outside his attorney's office in Kerrville, Texas. (Duane A. Laverty photo, file)

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LEFT: Attorney Richard Ellison

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“Such conduct is a serious violation of standards of professional conduct,” Ellison wrote in his motion. “Baker’s lawyer regrets that it has become necessary for him to bring this unseemly conduct to the court’s attention, but he cannot sit idly by while the state violates the law in its desperate efforts to secure the conviction of an innocent man.”

A McLennan County grand jury indicted Baker, 37, on a murder charge two weeks ago in the April 2006 death of his wife, Kari, at their home in Hewitt. Officials allege Baker was having an affair with another woman and slipped his wife sleeping pills and smothered her with a pillow before trying to make her death appear a suicide.

Baker, a former minister at several Waco-area churches and former chaplain at the Waco Center for Youth, has denied that he killed his wife as their two daughters slept down the hallway. He remained in the McLennan County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bond late Monday.

Bond, contempt hearing

A bond reduction hearing requested by Ellison is set for Thursday in Waco’s 19th State District Court. Now, the hearing also will include Ellison’s call for prosecutors Crawford Long and Susan Shafer to show why Judge Ralph Strother should not hold them in contempt of court for alleged actions that Ellison claims “flagrantly violated” Baker’s rights.

Strother previously has placed the parties in the case under a media gag order, saying the case should be tried in his court and not in the media. Segrest, Long, Shafer and Ellison all declined comment Monday about the accusations in Ellison’s motion.

Ellison also is asking Strother to grant a protective order for Baker to prevent prosecutors, their investigators or other law enforcement officials from trying to question him without his attorney present. Ellison, who is retained by Baker, also is seeking $2,500 in attorney’s fees for the time it took him to prepare the motion in response to what he charges is “the misconduct of the state’s attorney.”

Ellison alleges in the motion that the prosecutors sent Abdon Rodriguez, an investigator in their office, to visit Baker in the county jail Thursday and Friday. He claims that Rodriguez questioned Baker and “demanded” that he give his permission for a DNA sample.

Baker asked to speak to Ellison, but “Rodriguez continued to pressure him” and refused to tell him why he wanted the samples or what officials would compare them to, according to the motion.

On Monday, Ellison spoke to Long, who reportedly told him that the investigator went to the jail only to ask Baker for a DNA sample, Ellison wrote in his motion.

Later Monday morning, Shafer called Ellison to “apologize for the mix-up” and acknowledged that they should have contacted Ellison first, the motion states. Shafer also said they did not have a warrant to get DNA from Baker and asked Ellison if he would instruct Baker to submit a sample.

“The prosecutors’ explanation is, to put it politely, disingenuous in the extreme,” Ellison wrote. “It is obvious that they either don’t have the facts to show probable cause for obtaining a warrant or they are hiding physical evidence from Baker in violation of the law and his right to due process.”

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

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