Murder charges have been dismissed against a former LA businessman who is accused of orchestrating two murders-for-hire more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Richard Wall Sr. was extradited earlier this year from Montenegro, and the LA County District Attorney\u2019s Office said Monday an extradition agreement had made it impossible for the prosecution to continue on the murder counts.<\/p>\n
“This is not based upon any insufficiency of the evidence, nor upon any determination by the People that the charges are legally deficient,” Deputy District Attorney Hilary Williams told the judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe respectfully note that this limitation arises from the extradition decision of the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice in connection with the defendant’s extradition, specifically the refusal to extradite on murder charges due to penalty concerns,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Wall Sr. continues to face a pair of conspiracy charges tied to the same killings and was being held in jail with no bail.<\/p>\n
He is set to return to court later this month to enter pleas.<\/p>\n
The DA’s office declined to comment on the dismissal, citing the pending criminal case.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, Wall hired a hitman to murder attorney Jeffrey Tidus outside his Rolling Hills Estates home in 2009 and arranged the murder of one of Wall’s former employees, Juan Mendez, in Whittier in 2011.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Tidus had won a $1.7 million settlement in a legal case filed against a friend of Wall, and the friend allegedly wanted Tidus killed.<\/p>\n
Mendez had won a $300,000 suit against Wall for unpaid overtime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Murder charges have been dismissed against a former LA businessman who is accused of orchestrating two murders-for-hire more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3552,348,48,52,51,734,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-463850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-crime-and-courts","tag-investigation","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-law-enforcement","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}