Stephen Stubbs, the bikers’ rights attorney who appears to lead a mostly vice-free personal life, was arrested Thursday night in Vegas for being Stephen Stubbs.
Stubbs (above) was attending a Southern Nevada Confederation of Clubs meeting in the Leatherneck Club, a Marine Corps themed bar on Spring Mountain Road a couple miles off the Strip, when he was asked to step outside where a member of the Bikers for Christ Motorcycle Club was being detained by police. When the detainee saw Stubbs, he immediately told the cops, “That’s my lawyer.”
Stubb’s told the police that the patch holder had a Constitutional right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning and the interrogation then proceeded with Stubb’s advising his client. After three to five minutes a police lieutenant assigned to the Las Vegas Metro Gang Task Force arrived and ordered Stubbs to leave so he could question the detainee in private. When Stubbs protested, “He has a Fifth Amendment right to counsel,” Stubbs was arrested, cuffed and transported to the Clark County Detention Center for booking on a charge of Obstructing a Public Officer.
The Booking Game
According to Stubbs, “After seeing multiple groups of arrestees processed over a two hour period, I inquired into the status of my booking, and was told that they could not start the booking process until the ‘paperwork was completed.’ During the three hours it took Lieutenant Yomita ( the arresting officer) and Vegas Metro Officer Del Rosario to finish their reports, Yomita repeatedly entered and exited the CCDC, intentionally walking in front of me and giving him a gloating smirk. After the Del Rosario finished his report at 10:47 p.m., the officer went to the CCDC exit next to me and I asked him ‘Did you write a long report?’”
The cop replied “Maybe. I’m really bad at writing.”
Stubbs began booking four hours after his arrest and was released from the detention center at three the next morning.
Implications
Yesterday Stubbs told Ken Ritter of The Associated Press “This was most definitely malicious. Since when is an attorney arrested for standing up for his client’s Fifth Amendment right to counsel? I think there are larger issues here. They’re trying to bully me off the case.”
“The case” is a biker civil rights lawsuit Stubbs filed against Vegas Metro and other police agencies and officers in June 2012. The suit alleges that members of several motorcycle clubs in Southern Nevada have been the victims of a malicious campaign of official harassment and seeks about $12 million in damages.
A Vegas Metro Police Officer named Jose Hernandez told The AP, “There is no harassment. He was arrested for obstruction.”
