Full Thread: Edgar Steele
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Old February 11th, 2011 #1334
Donald E. Pauly
Banned
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 4,130
Angry Insanity Defense for Steele?

I knew that there was something wrong with Steele's mugshot. He should have had a look of rage on his face but instead looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The government's case is no less of a laughing stock but there is a good possibility now that the tapes of Steele are real.

Steele's letter to me failed all authentication tests and I thought it had been forged by the Famous But Incompetent. A later comparison to his letter to Ingri Cassel proved at least that it was his handwriting. He said several things that a competent lawyer would have never said in a letter presumably copied by the FBI. The jail house recording of a call to his wife and son also showed lack of caution on his part.

Steele would have had to be crazy as a shit house rat to get involved with a character like Fairfax in an even crazier plot which made no sense. Perhaps he had a number of mini strokes during his aneurism repair which destroyed small parts of his brain. Such surgery is highly dangerous because small debris goes directly to the brain and lodges in small arteries there.

The loss of blood pressure for quite some time when the aneurism blew could also have done some localized brain damage. On the other hand, his one main newsletter in April showed his mind to be the same old Steele. At least he is rid of his public pretender who has done NOTHING except let him rot in jail. This case is getting curiouser and curiouser.

Comment at the link but keep your comments civil.
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http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/siren...plan/?c=258059


Steele’s lawyers hint at defense plan
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Posted by Meghann
Feb. 9, 2011 11 a.m.

Two private defense attorneys representing accused North Idaho lawyer Edgar Steele said in documents filed this week that they intend to “introduce expert evidence relating to a mental disease or defect.” That disease or defect has “bearing on (Steele's) guilt or his lack of a knowing or intentional mental state,” according to the document, filed Monday by Steele's attorneys, Robert T. McAllister, of Denver, and Gary Amendola, of Coeur d'Alene.

The document offers a glimpse at a possible defense strategy for Steele, who is accused of hiring a hitman turned FBI informant to kill his wife, Cyndi Steele, and her mother. Steele faces decades in prison under federal charges that allege he hired a man who affixed a pipe bomb under his wife's SUV.

Prosecutors say they have tape recordings of Steele talking about the plot with the would-be hitman, Larry Fairfax. In one recording, Steele tells Fairfax “to make sure that they were dead after the accident because Edgar Steele did not want to take care of a paraplegic” according to an affidavit prepared by the FBI.

Wesley Hoyt, a lawyer representing Cyndi Steele, has said the federal government is capable of manufacturing Edgar Steele's voice on those tapes. Cyndi Steele is adamant that her husband is innocent and visits him at the Spokane County Jail on a weekly basis.

Steele had been represented by Roger Peven, executive director of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho, but U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill approved Steele's request for new counsel during a closed hearing Monday in Coeur d'Alene. Amendola is a longtime Coeur d'Alene defense attorney who's handled many high-profile cases.

McAllister does not have a license to practice law in Idaho but is licensed in Colorado. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago and Denver from 1976 to 1983 and has been in private practice since.