Judge grants defense access to murder trial evidence

CROWN POINT, Ind. -- A judge granted attorneys for a man accused of killing three teenagers broad access to the evidence against him, including notes taken by investigators and police technicians.\nThe Lake County public defender said during a court hearing Wednesday he would seek "every scrap of paper, every telephone message" to ensure 50-year-old David Maust is not convicted and sentenced to death as a serial killer.\n"I have to turn over every stone, every leaf to look for evidence," said Public Defender Thomas Vanes.\nJudge Clarence Murray also instructed prosecutors to provide the names and addresses of all potential witnesses in the case, along with criminal histories of any non-law enforcement people who may testify at Maust's trial.\nDeputy Prosecutor Peter Villareal said his office already was providing the defense everything.\nMaust has pleaded innocent to charges that he murdered 16-year-old James Raganyi, 13-year-old Michael Dennis and 19-year-old Nicholas James, then buried their bodies in the basement of the apartment house where he lived.\nProsecutors said Maust should be executed because he is a serial killer and he has a previous murder conviction in Illinois for the 1981 stabbing of a 15-year-old Chicago boy.\nDefense attorneys renewed their arguments against the death penalty Wednesday, saying the motion was not written in accordance with Indiana's death penalty law even after the document was amended by prosecutors.\nMaust sat impassively while the lawyers argued technicalities that could lead to his death by lethal injection. About a dozen relatives of the victims at the hearing also watched.\nMaust, of Hammond, has been held without bond in Lake County Jail since December.\nOn Dec. 9, police found the bodies of Raganyi and Dennis wrapped in plastic bags and entombed in concrete in the basement of the house where Maust rented an apartment. James' body was found buried in the concrete a day later.\nProsecutors allege that Maust lured the teenagers to his second-floor apartment with promises of drugs and alcohol then killed them.\nThe judge approved a gag order in December prohibiting any public official involved in the investigation and Maust's defense attorneys from discussing the case publicly outside court.