GOODYEAR, AZ — Evidence issues at the Goodyear Police Department have put a major child murder case on hold. Now, defense attorneys are accusing police and prosecutors of hiding proof of the mistakes.
This is all playing out during the trial of Lisa and Germayne Cunningham. The couple is accused of the murder of their 7-year-old daughter nearly a decade ago.
"We can't agree on literally the first piece of evidence back from 2017, going forward," said attorney Daniel Raynack in court this week.
He is one of several attorneys representing Lisa Cunningham. Taylor Fox, who also spoke during that same April 1 hearing, is representing Germayne Cunningham.
This trial was suspended indefinitely last month. The couple was released from custody once Goodyear’s evidence issues were exposed.
ABC15 broke the story, revealing that Goodyear cannot prove “chain of custody” for evidence going back years.
Internal police documents show Goodyear has issues with their computer system, creating made-up dates and times. Property and evidence workers have also admitted to changing dates and times.
The Cunninghams’ defense attorneys requested emails, notes, and other documents from Goodyear police and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Both defense teams said in a court hearing that they aren’t getting everything they’re requesting.
"So, there's going to be a motion to compel for at least some of these items," said Fox.
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Thousands of pages have been disclosed or provided to the defense teams since this court chaos began. Those same attorneys said they expect to file additional motions because they believe there are even more issues.
The next steps would be interviews, ahead of an evidentiary hearing. But in court, prosecutors said there’s no need to hold the hearing.
"What they are fishing for is not there," said Maricopa County prosecutor Joshua Clark.
County prosecutors told the judge they are starting to schedule interviews.
Fox pushed back on the "fishing" claim in court.
"Detective Yeo describing it as a massive s*** storm, their own PNE supervisor describing this as we've been doing this for years," said Fox. "And now, what you're seeing now is an attempt to play damage control."
The ABC15 investigators asked Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell about some of these same allegations at her last press conference.
"It wouldn't be the first time somebody had said something bad about this office in court," said Mitchell. "I'm going to let it play out in court. We'll do our responding there."
The jury is still waiting and will come back to court later this month. At that hearing, the judge will ask if they can stay through June.
If they don’t have enough jurors, this case could end in a mistrial if the judge doesn’t dismiss it over the evidence issues.
