Haun’s Letters From Dally Spark Courtroom Battle

Since her arrest in August on murder charges, Diana Haun has received 71 letters from her boyfriend and co-defendant Michael Dally, and she is fighting to keep them secret.

The content of the missives and cards remains sealed by the court--triggering the latest courtroom skirmish in the high-profile murder case.

He knows what the letters say. She knows what the letters say. And her lawyers know what the letters say--and that’s just the way they would like to keep it.

“These are the private documents of Ms. Haun,” argued Deputy Public Defender Susan Olson during a court hearing Wednesday, urging Judge Frederick A. Jones to keep the letters under seal and out of the prosecution’s hands.

Olson told Jones the letters contain no information about the offenses for which Dally and Haun are charged. The pair are accused of plotting and carrying out the kidnap-slaying of Dally’s wife, Sherri, last year.

Dally’s attorneys also urged the judge to keep Haun’s papers private, reiterating that the letters appear to be a personal correspondence and not an exchange of facts or opinions about the case.

“I think that Ms. Haun does have a privacy issue here,” defense attorney James M. Farley said. “I don’t think that the district attorney is entitled to every piece of paper.”

But prosecutors are not so sure.

They want to know whether any aspects of Dally and Haun’s pending murder case have been discussed in the letters, and they want the judge to decide whether letters exchanged between two co-defendants should be private.

“We haven’t seem them and really don’t know what they are,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth said during a court hearing on the matter.

The issue arose recently when Haun’s attorneys handed the judge a bulky package of letters. The attorneys believed the correspondence might fall within the rules of information that defense attorneys and prosecutors must share before trial.

Prosecutors had sought a search warrant last month to obtain one particular letter from Haun’s jail cell, a letter written from Dally to Haun that contained a picture of a necklace on the outside envelope.

Questions about the whereabouts of Sherri Dally’s necklace were raised during grand jury proceedings last year as prosecutors sought indictments against Dally and Haun.

After the warrant was issued, Haun’s attorneys gave additional letters to the judge, though he has not seen or read them.

Last week he asked Olson to compile a log detailing the number of letters, general content and postage dates.

Back in court Wednesday, Olson told the judge that the sealed envelope contains 71 letters from Dally to Haun and all mailed between Aug. 29, 1996, and March 27. Haun was arrested in late July and indicted by the grand jury Aug. 16 on charges of murder and kidnapping.

For his part, Jones said he was not anxious to read the letters. He asked the attorneys to file briefs detailing their positions on the matter, and postponed it to next week.