Eight months after Jose Benitez-Rodriguez was found shot to death inside a trailer near the Arts District, the death penalty trial of the man accused of killing him began this week in Las Vegas, with prosecutors and defense attorneys offering starkly different accounts of what happened that January night. Curtis Hart, now 34, is charged with open murder with a deadly weapon, robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery with a deadly weapon.
The prosecution portrayed Hart as a violent pimp who killed a customer, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The account described Busby meeting Benitez-Rodriguez at a trailer and apparently calling Hart. It also said the suspects left and that Busby held a phone.
The defense offered a competing narrative, arguing that Hart acted in self-defense. The account said Benitez-Rodriguez threatened the pair with a gun and a knife, and that Busby wanted to leave but Benitez-Rodriguez would not let her go. The account also said Benitez-Rodriguez paid Busby for sex, pressured her for more, tried to stop her from leaving and threatened her with a knife and gun.
Physical Evidence and a Contested Witness
Crime scene investigators recovered multiple realistic-looking pellet guns from inside the trailer, a detail the same Review-Journal report notes as central to the defense’s claim that Benitez-Rodriguez brandished simulated weapons during the encounter. Hart is accused of shooting Benitez-Rodriguez multiple times inside the trailer, where the victim lived on the grounds of a pallet business…