Ex-Las Vegas officer’s vacated conviction was ‘probably long overdue,’ attorney says

One of the prosecutors who helped put a Las Vegas police officer behind bars in a decades-old murder case doesn’t mind that the former officer may be released from prison after a federal judge ordered the conviction vacated, but said he disagrees with the reasoning behind the decision.

Ronald Mortensen, now 59, was a young Metropolitan Police Department officer when he was found guilty at trial and sentenced to life in prison without parole in connection with an off-duty December 1996 drive-by shooting that killed Daniel Mendoza, 21.

At the time of the shooting, Mortensen was accompanied by another Metro officer, Christopher Brady. Both men claimed the other committed the shooting and Brady, who could not be reached for comment, received a nine-year prison sentence after admitting he violated the civil rights of Hispanics.

On Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson overturned the conviction and ordered Mortensen to receive a new trial. In a 67-page decision, Dawson wrote that he had found serious issues with the jury instructions and what he viewed as a prosecutorial suppression of evidence that Brady may have told another officer he wanted to conduct a drive-by shooting.

Mortensen, who remains in prison, could not be reached for comment, and his most recent attorney said he may still not be aware of the ruling.

“I’m not disappointed in the outcome,” said former Chief Deputy District Attorney William Koot, who retired from the Clark County district attorney’s office in 2001 and prosecuted Mortensen’s case. “I think he’s clearly served enough time.”

But Koot took issue with Dawson’s reasoning.

Brady’s comments were “inconsequential” because it was clear he and Mortensen were both involved in a drive-by, Koot said. He also called Dawson’s concerns about the jury instructions “bulls—t.”

“I think he’s reading the law completely wrong,” Koot said of Dawson.

Attorney Frank Cremen, who represented Mortensen at trial, said Dawson was right to vacate his former client’s conviction.

“I think it was something that was probably long overdue,” he said.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Tuesday evening that it was “too premature” to say whether Mortensen would be retried.

Dawson’s decision

In his decision, Dawson examined an allegation that prosecutors suppressed evidence about Brady telling another officer he wanted to commit a drive-by shooting.

The other officer, named in Dawson’s ruling as Mark Barry and in some previous reports as Marc Barry, testified to a federal grand jury that “Brady had repeatedly expressed a desire to conduct a ‘drive-by,’” although he believed Brady was joking, according to the ruling. That testimony came in 1998, a year after Mortensen was convicted.

Mortensen tried to use Barry’s testimony to get a new trial, but the Nevada Supreme Court found that the testimony was “immaterial,” the decision said.

Dawson disagreed. At trial, Brady had denied talking to Barry about harassing people, according to Monday’s ruling, but Barry’s testimony “would have exposed Brady’s lie about whether he discussed harassment of civilians — and a drive-by shooting most certainly qualifies as harassment — and therefore could have affected Brady’s credibility.”

The judge added: “It is reasonably probable Barry’s testimony would have changed the complexion of the case by undermining Brady’s credibility while exposing he might have a motive for the shooting that Mortensen did not. This, in turn, could have affected the believability of Mortensen’s version of the events and his claim that Brady took the Sig Sauer and fired the shots.”

During Mortensen’s trial in 1997, his lawyer said he had received an anonymous call stating that Brady told Metro officer Mark Barry he wanted to carry out a drive-by shooting.

At the time, according to Dawson’s ruling, a prosecutor told the court: “I had an investigator talk to Mark B(a)rry. He said it is nonsense but I wanted to make that part of the record.”

No homicide investigators contacted Barry, according to Dawson.

“In short,” he wrote, “the state failed to disclose what it could have obtained.”

Cremen thinks the Barry issue was significant enough to overturn the conviction.

“Can you imagine if I had been able to argue to the jury that I had evidence and I brought it in to show that … Chris Brady talked about doing a drive-by shooting before the shooting ever occurred?” he asked. “Don’t you think that would have been persuasive?”

Barry could not be reached for comment.

Brady and Mortensen were both “equally guilty” of a drive-by, Koot said, but the crucial question was which man pulled the trigger. Koot still believes prosecutors convincingly proved to the jury with firearms testing that the shooter was Mortensen.

Cremen said the firearms expert testimony was “contrived.”

Not clear if Mortensen will be retried

The murder case was not Mortensen’s only run-in with the legal system.

While incarcerated, he was accused of trying to cheat his elderly grandmother out of a million-dollar home in California to pay appeal costs.

Mortensen pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit a crime in 2009.

The plea was an Alford plea, meaning he admitted only that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him.

Dawson probably looked at the murder case “subjectively” and decided Mortensen had served enough time and should be released, Koot said.

“If Mortensen gets out,” he said, “good luck to him.”

Attorney Tony Farmani, who was appointed to represent Mortensen in 2019, said Dawson did “a very thorough job” with his decision.

“You feel like justice is served,” Farmani said. “This is what separates this country from other countries, because justice ultimately prevails in the United States.”

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Review-Journal staff reporter Ricardo Torres-Cortez contributed to this report.