Left without financial arrangements in Utah, Alahverdian given more time to find a lawyer
Over the objection of a state prosecutor, a Utah judge on Tuesday granted former Rhode Island con man and nabbed international fugitive Nicholas Alahverdian more time to hire a private lawyer to defend himself against two 2008 rape charges.
Alahverdian’s prospective lawyer Lance Bastian told the court he and Alahverdian had yet to come to financial terms because of the difficulty connecting with Alahverdian’s wife, Miranda, who remains in the United Kingdom.
“The difficulty is, frankly, his wife is still in the UK, communication has been difficult there and making the appropriate financial arrangements for her has been a challenge,” Bastian told District Court Judge Derek Pullan.
“She’s just got a lot on her plate that she’s dealing with right now, under the circumstances and so they are working on it," said Bastian. "It’s an active process, but it’s just taken some time.”
When Judge Pullan asked how much more time Bastian would need, the defense lawyer referred to his client, appearing via video link from a county jail and asked if he “wanted to chime in on that.”
Speaking through an oxygen mask, Alahverdian, 36, who refused to show up at two previous court hearings, said something incoherent to the judge before moving closer to a microphone and mumbling that a month “would be grand.”
Prosecution frustrated by delays in Alahverdian's case
Prosecutor Stephen Jones, echoing the frustration of prosecutors in Scotland who dealt for months with Alahverdian’s court-chided stalling tactics during his extradition hearing, was reluctant to agree to a further delay.
“I don’t want to make things more difficult than they have to be, but we have been waiting on this case for a number of years,” said Jones.
Noting Alahverdian made his first Utah court appearance on Jan. 23rd after being extradited out of Scotland, Jones said, “here we are in March, and we still aren’t any closer to proceeding. And so, the state would ask the court to appoint a public defender so that we can get this going.”
But Judge Pullan said “the defendant has the right to appear by and through counsel of his choosing in criminal proceedings and I will give him a reasonable time to retain the services of that lawyer.”
The case was continued until April 16.
Alahverdian went from the RI State House to on the run
Alahverdian, once a familiar State House advocate for child care reform, is charged with raping two Utah woman in the fall of 2008 whom he had met online and briefly dated. One case allegedly occurred in Orem in September of that year, and the other case allegedly happened in November or December in Salt Lake City.
The 36-year-old Alahverdian, who faked his death in 2020 as the FBI sought him for credit card fraud, was arrested on an Interpol warrant in Glasgow, Scotland in December 2021.
From that moment on, despite matching fingerprints, identifying tattoos, previous mugshots – and the digital footprints he had left on his iPhone that tracked him to Scotland – he has insisted authorities have the wrong man.
More: 'Dateline NBC' to cover story of RI fugitive Nicholas Alahverdian. Here's the story.
He’s not Nicholas Alahverdian, or Nicholas Rossi, the name he is charged under, but Arthur Knight, a innocent victim of a scurrilous judicial system.
In January 2020, just weeks after speaking to an FBI agent about the credit card allegations he faced, Alahverdian began sending out press releases to Rhode Island media outlets announcing he had been diagnosed with late stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and offering himself up for interviews.
On Feb. 29, 2020, another press release from “The Office of Nicholas Alahverdian” announced his death.
And a woman who identified herself as his wife began making calls to reporters, pressuring them to report on his death and the upcoming memorial service.
It was all a ruse.
Contact Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Nick Alahverdian's money troubles delay Utah rape case
