Debra Milke in Court on Sept 23, 2013 as the Murder Case Against her Implodes

Phoenix, AZ–For the first time in 23 years and 10 months Debra Milke attended a court hearing with the grace and dignity of the judge, prosecutors, defense lawyers and public.  For the first time she was not brought into court by the sheriff in handcuffs and shackles.  

Milke is at the bitter end of an experience that could only be described as Orwellian. I have known the truth since the very beginning of this ordeal.  Debra Milke was never involved in the murder of her four year-old son Christopher.

Milke was framed by a rogue cop, Armando Saldate who took another detour around the law and moral values.  Saldate took a shortcut that cost Milke half of her life and threatened to extinguish it altogether. It took nearly a quarter of a century for the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to finally intervene in this vicious deed.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has pulled out all the stops now to put Milke on the lethal injection table despite ethics, moral considerations or basic humanity. This is more about covering up criminal conduct by a cop and perhaps a prosecutor.

I know that Montgomery fears a protracted and embarrassing civil trial where a jury will be deciding what compensation to give Milke for her long and forced journey through Hell.  Perhaps an amount of around $1million per year in that hot, sweaty, cramped Death Row solitary confinement cell is reasonable.  

I think we all know Montgomery does not want to see his office entangled in such a display and will apparently stop at nothing to avoid that scenario.

The only evidence Montgomery has is the redundant unrecorded and otherwise undocumented word of a serial perjurer.  There is the also the issue of my secretly taped interview of Milke while she was being booked at the Maricopa County Jail receiving room.  

When I asked Milke if she told the police that she had any involvement in this crime she gave me an angry and emotional denial.  That tape was played to over 1 million TV viewers that evening.  

My taped interview with Milke was just a couple of hours after Saldate four or five days in a police report later claimed she confessed to him.

The matter of Saldate’s unforgivable failure to use a tape recorder for his interview with Milke is anything but trivial.  If I could use a concealed tape recorder so could have Saldate. 

For decades before the Milke murder investigation it was the routine for Phoenix police vice cops to covertly record sexual propositions of whores and Johns for misdemeanor prostitution arrests. I can’t imagine that cop and hooker verbal exchanges deserves recording but an interview with a potential murder suspect somehow does not.

What kind of man do we have as the elected County Attorney that’s only too willing to gamble with human life using the words of a known deceptive creep with a badge?  

Montgomery is fighting hard to use the testimony of a disgraced former cop that has made it more than clear he’s now unwilling to say anything more because it will incriminate him. 

I seriously question this vile act and so should the State Bar of Arizona and the voters.  I find Montgomery’s personal conduct here is shocking and evil.  I can’t imagine his own family tolerating what he is doing to Debra Milke and the taxpayers.  Montgomery’s own family members need to learn if he even has a soul.  I’m embarrassed for them.

Here is the entire pretrial conference that took place on Monday before Judge Rosa Mroz that you will only see here at Crimefile news.