Steele trial moved to next month, and Boise
COEUR d’ALENE — The trial of North Idaho attorney Edgar J. Steele has been moved to Boise and is scheduled — at least for now — to start April 26.
Federal prosecutors Monday afternoon reluctantly agreed not to further block a defense motion to continue the trial, and U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill finally dismissed about 70 prospective jurors hours after they had showed up at the courthouse.
The court already has moved the trial from August to November, and then to Monday. Steele was arrested at his home in June.
Winmill decided to move the trial to Boise from Coeur d’Alene because of court scheduling issues and publicity concerns.
With the extra 45-plus days, a defense expert now will examine the audio recordings from June 9 and 10, 2010, in which Steele, 65, and hitman-turned-FBI-informant Larry Fairfax allegedly discussed killing Cyndi Steele, Edgar Steele’s wife.
Edgar Steele, of Sagle, has been indicted by a grand jury on a charge of murder-for-hire, and has pleaded not guilty.
The defense expert likely will seek problems with the recordings’ authenticity and reliability. Prosecutors say Fairfax wore a hidden recording device in meetings with Steele in which Steele hired him to do the killing.
Fairfax, also of Sagle, has said in court he took payment from Steele and admitted to placing a massive pipe bomb under Cyndi Steele’s vehicle, which never did blow up.
The FBI will have time to perform tests to demonstrate that any defense challenges to the recordings’ authenticity and reliability are false.
One audio recording expert for the defense, Dr. George Papcun, has already evaluated a copy of the recordings, though not the originals, which are being held at an FBI lab in Virginia.
Papcun concluded that to “a reasonable degree of scientific probability that the tapes do not represent a true and valid representation of reality and they are unreliable,” according to court documents.
Papcun may now travel to Virginia to evaluate the June recordings.
Steele is also charged with use of explosive materials to commit a federal felony; possession of a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence; and tampering with a witness. Steele has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the alleged target of the hit, Cyndi Steele, believes he’s completely innocent.
The tampering charge is the result of telephone conversations Steele had with his wife from Kootenai County jail in which he told her to deny to authorities that it was his voice on the secret recordings.
She has heard the conversations recorded between her husband and Fairfax and said she doesn’t believe the recordings are reliable.
Steele, who calls himself the “attorney for the damned,” in 2000 represented Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler in a federal civil lawsuit brought by two people who were attacked by the group’s security guards. A jury awarded the victims $6.3 million, which bankrupted the Aryan Nations and forced Butler to sell his 20-acre compound.