Former attorney denies saying Paul Flores could lead investigators to Kristin Smart’s body
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Kristin Smart murder trial
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Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of stories examining hundreds of improperly sealed documents in the Kristin Smart trial. The Tribune obtained the documents by joining with three other media companies to form a coalition that took the issue to court. The coalition won its argument, and the documents were unsealed.
A former lawyer for Paul Flores denies he ever said Flores could lead investigators to Kristin Smart’s body in exchange for a plea deal, the attorney told The Tribune.
Melvin de la Motte says the quotation attributed to him, which was included in the affidavit supporting Ruben Flores’ arrest warrant, is false, and he said investigators did not reach out to him for corroboration.
De la Motte represented Flores in the 1990s and told The Tribune he did not know statements attributed to him were used in the arrest warrant until the newspaper published it in a series of stories examining documents unsealed by the court.
According to the warrant, which was signed by San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Matthew Guerrero on April 6, 2021, James Murphy, who represented the Smart family in civil litigation against the Flores family, told investigators that he remembered De la Motte offering an “extremely low criminal charge,” such as an infraction, to resolve the case.
The warrant also cited notes from an alleged meeting in 2010 between De la Motte and former San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Gerald Shea, in which De la Motte said Paul Flores could lead investigators to Smart’s body in exchange for a plea to involuntary manslaughter.
De la Motte said the claim was “a total lie.”
Murphy declined to comment, and The Tribune could not reach Shea, despite repeated attempts.
Neither the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office nor the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office could comment on the allegations because of the strict gag order in the case.
De la Motte’s objection to the statement attributed to him comes as the 3-month-long murder trial nears its conclusion and Flores and his father, Ruben Flores, await the verdict of their respective juries, which are now in deliberations at the Monterey County Courthouse in Salinas.
Paul Flores is accused of killing Smart after an off-campus part in May 1996, and Ruben Flores is accused of helping his son hide the body.
What did the warrant say?
According to the warrant, two statements attributed to De la Motte led investigators to believe Paul Flores was “clearly” involved in Smart’s death, because if he wasn’t, a plea wouldn’t have been discussed.
They were found in a manila envelope lying flat on the bottom of a box of case information from November 2016.
The envelope contained handwritten meeting notes that appear to be from a plea bargain discussion for Paul Flores in February 2003, the warrant said, as well as a two-page letter that appeared to be a follow-up to the plea discussion from Murphy.
“Based on the dialogue with De la Motte, Murphy had absolutely no doubt that Flores knows the circumstances of Smart’s death, and the location of her body,” the warrant said.
Then, San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow sent San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson an email in October 2019 that contained electronic notes taken by former District Attorney Gerald Shea on May 2, 2010, according to the warrant.
“I just want to say one thing and I shouldn’t even be saying this, but if you come to me with an offer of an involuntary with only one condition and that is that he’ll take law enforcement to the body, then I can make that deal happen,” De la Motte is quoted as telling Shea in the 2010 notes, according to the warrant.
De la Motte denies ever saying anything to the effect of suggesting a plea deal that would insinuate Paul Flores’ guilt.
Paul Flores’ former attorney denies plea deal discussion
De la Motte said he never personally discussed the case with Murphy, other than when both attorneys were present during depositions in the civil case.
The only thing close to a plea discussion occurred in 1998 with former District Attorney Shea, De la Motte said.
He said he met with Shea in 1998 shortly after he took office to discuss an offer from Shea’s predecessor, Barry LaBarbera, who is now a San Luis Obispo Superior Court judge.
LaBarbera offered Paul Flores a plea for voluntary manslaughter, but Flores rejected the plea, De la Motte said. Simply out of curiosity, he said he asked Shea if the Smart family might be open to an involuntary manslaughter plea, but Shea refused to ask because the office would not accept that charge.
De la Motte said he then asked Tana Coates, who was an associate at Murphy’s firm at the time and is also now a San Luis Obispo Superior Court judge, to ask the family if they would agree to an involuntary manslaughter charge.
“I do know that it got bandied about that the defendant supposedly would accept a deal of involuntary, which is a total lie,” De la Motte said.
“I never said that he would accept that deal. Nobody’s ever said he would accept that deal,” he said. “The only thing I did was ask them to check with the family to see if the family would go along with that. That was the only thing that happened.”
De la Motte doesn’t know if the family was ever asked about involuntary manslaughter because no one ever got back to him, he said.
De la Motte retired in 2001 — nine years before the alleged meeting between him and Shea occurred, he said.
“When I retired, I retired. I didn’t practice law at all,” De la Motte said. “I had not seen Paul Flores in at least a decade before that. I did not represent him.”
Paul Flores’ lawyer in 2010 was Stacey A. Miller of Tharpe & Howell, according to court documents obtained by the “Your Own Backyard” podcast and shared with The Tribune.
De la Motte said Shea did not take notes during their 1998 meeting, but he’s unsure if there was a deputy present who might have done so.
“If (there was a) deputy (who) wrote down that statement, that says something like, ‘I can make this deal happen,’ that statement that’s quoted, I’ll tell that guy to his face. He’s a liar,” De la Motte told The Tribune. “That never happened. He distorted that completely.”
He added that neither the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office nor the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office reached out to him to corroborate the statements attributed to him in the warrant.
What does this mean to the case?
Could false material in the arrest warrant affect the case? The short answer is no.
An arrest warrant allows a law enforcement agency to detain a person on suspicion of a crime. It does not bring charges.
Charges are filed by the prosecutor’s office, in this case the District Attorney’s Office, and are technically separate from the suspected crimes in the warrant.
According to the 1969 California Supreme Court case People v. Bradford, once charges are filed against a defendant, they are no longer held on the arrest warrant. Because of this, a defendant can’t challenge charges by solely alleging factual errors in an arrest warrant affidavit.
And under the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court case Frisbie v. Collins, an illegal arrest is not a defense to a state or federal prosecution.
If law enforcement exploited the period of illegal detention to obtain evidence used at trial, then the evidence obtained can be suppressed, according to the 1968 California Supreme Court case People v. Sesslin.
But De la Motte’s alleged statements in the warrant were not shown as evidence to jurors and are therefore not at issue in the Flores criminal trial.
This story was originally published October 6, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
