Breaking News: Politician Found Guilty of Murdering Journalist

United States: On Wednesday a jury in Las Vegas Nevada convicted a former elected county official for the murder of an investigative reporter whose articles were unkind to the official and was jailed for life but can apply for parole after two decades.

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Robert Telles, a former Clark County public administrator, was charged with the 2022 murder of Las Vegas Review, Journalist Jeff German, the case that highlighted the dangers for journalists in the United States.

A jury has ruled the killing was ‘willful, deliberate and premeditated,’ claiming that Telles ‘laid in wait for German’ before murdering the 69-year-old outside of his suburban Las Vegas residence by stabbing him.

According to county prosecutor, Christopher Hamner, “A journalist wrote a story, or a series of stories, and lost their life over it because someone, a politician, an outgoing politician, just did not like them,” as Reuters reported.

Lawyer urged for leniency

The lawyer of Telles, Robert Draskovich, therefore urged the jury to be lenient on the convict and allow him to be paroled since he has no other criminal record.

Telles sighed when a court clerk announced it as follows: Fans of German as well as his family members who were in the public gallery cried and hugged each other.

Some of the workers from the Clark County public administrator’s office, most of whom requested German to investigate Telles cried and hugged their colleague and wore red shirts with the image of the reporter’s face and a pin.

Moreover, as Glenn Cook, executive editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, “Jeff was killed for doing the kind of work in which he took great pride: His reporting held an elected official accountable for bad behavior and empowered voters to choose someone else for the job,” as Reuters reported.

Cook added, “In many countries, the killers of journalists go unpunished,” and “Not so in Las Vegas.”

German spent months investigating complaints Telles directed an abusive workplace and had an affair with subordinates.

Some of the pieces of this evidence comprised DNA taken from under German’s fingernails belonging to Telles and a video of a car with a registration number belonging to a wife to Telles, though driven by the attacker.

The former official said in his statement that he was framed as a culprit for German murder because he attempted to expose an alleged kickback scam.

Unrelated to this case defense attorney based in Las Vegas, Robert Langford briefly stated that the DNA discovered under German’s fingernails amounted to “an insurmountable bit of evidence.”