New date set for Robert Telles murder trial

LAS VEGAS (KALS) — A judge set a new trial date for the accused murderer Robert Telles Tuesday despite the defendant’s desire to go to trial immediately.

Clark County District Court judge Michelle Leavitt pushed the trial –- originally scheduled to take place March 18 — to Aug. 5, due to a variety of electronic devices that needed to be reviewed.

Those devices include a 4.5-terabyte hard drive related to a police bribery investigation of Telles while he was still the elected public administrator in Clark County and phones and computers police seized from the victim, investigative reporter Jeff German, after German was found stabbed to death in September 2022.

The judge, prosecutors, and Telles’ lawyer, Robert Draskovich, discussed possible trial dates during Tuesday’s hearing, and prosecutors said the July date “didn’t seem very realistic,” so Leavitt set the trial for August.

“I want to give you a realistic trial date,” Leavitt said.

But Draskovich, who Telles recently hired after over a year of representing himself in court, said Telles did not want to wait any longer for the review of the devices. Telles, who has been held at Clark County detention Center since his arrest in 2022.

Lawyers for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, on Leavitt’s order, are overseeing the newspaper’s review of German’s devices. A review of one of German’s cell phones is complete, but there are five devices remaining. The newspaper’s lawyers and prosecutors agreed to a new protocol that would add a significant amount of staff

“That may not be enough time,” Joel Tasca, a lawyer for the Review-Journal, said.

“It’s important to have a trial date that we’re working towards,” Leavitt responded.

Telles, 47, is due back in court on May 1.

German was found stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 3, 2022. Detectives said Telles’ DNA was found under German’s fingernails and believe Telles targeted German because of articles he wrote about problems in the Clark County Public Administrator’s office, which Telles oversaw.

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