Indiana Judge could bar prosecutor from ex-trooper's trial

ROCKPORT, Ind. (AP) -- A judge said he will decide soon whether to block a county prosecutor who won a murder conviction against a former Indiana state trooper in the deaths of his wife and two children from helping the new prosecutor in a possible retrial of the case. David Camm's attorney argued during a court hearing Wednesday that Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson should be barred from the case because the state appeals court ruled Henderson had a conflict of interest over a contract he signed to write a book about the 2000 shooting deaths of Camm's family. Camm attorney Stacy Uliana said allowing Henderson to do anything more than hand over the files to special prosecutor Stan Levco would go against the purpose of the appeals court ruling, The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., reported. "The more Mr. Levco feels he has to rely on Mr. Henderson, the more the conflict," she said. Levco, the former Vanderburgh County prosecutor, said it's necessary for him to have some contact with Henderson but that he won't be "infected." "I've been appointed to do this independently and that won't be the case," Levco told WAVE-TV. Spencer County Judge Jonathan Dartt, appointed as special judge in the case, said during Wednesday's hearing that he would decide "as quickly as I can" how involved Henderson can be. A clerk for Dartt said Thursday he hadn't yet made a ruling. Levco is the third prosecutor to handle the case involving the September 2000 shooting deaths of 35-year-old Kimberly Camm, 7-year-old son Bradley and 5-year-old daughter Jill in the family's garage in the Floyd County town of Georgetown near Louisville. Juries have twice convicted Camm, but both convictions were set aside on appeal. He remains in prison while the murder charges are pending against him for the shootings that happened about four months after he resigned from the state police. The current judge hasn't yet set a location for the new trial, which Camm attorney Richard Kammen said the defense wants moved as far north in Indiana as possible. "We want to get out of the southern Indiana media market where the publicity has been overwhelming," he said. Both sides predicted a third trial would not begin before next year. Published: Fri, Apr 20, 2012