Three conversations Timothy Dean had with authorities, after police began to link him to the double homicide case in Sodus last fall, were at stake in a Wayne County courtroom Friday morning.

Assistant District Attorney Christine Callanan wants those interviews — which authorities recorded using audio and video equipment — included in the case against Dean, who is charged with first- and second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Joshua Niles and Amber Washburn, at their Sodus home last October.

Dean pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Dean’s attorney, Joe Damelio, challenged the admissibility of them based on the way they were conducted. Damelio raised objection with two conversations Dean had with authorities at the Dumas, Texas police station, and questioned law enforcement agents about them in the Lyons courtroom of Wayne County Judge Daniel Barrett.

The first was with an FBI agent and a Texas ranger. Dean was picked up from his home and driven 20 minutes to the police station in Dumas, about 50 miles north of Amarillo. Damelio depicted that conversation as interrogation and aggressive.

FBI agent Scott Hendricks confirmed on the stand during Damelio's cross-examination that Texas Ranger Phillip Ditto during the interview came, at one point, within an inch of Dean. While screaming obscenities, Ranger Ditto called Dean a “coward” and challenged him to "man slap" him.

"My client was in Texas, in custody. He was not free to leave. He was in a secured facility. He was being interviewed by law enforcement, interrogated about this particular case," Damelio said. "Question was, should they have read him his Miranda warnings? The simple answer is yes, they should have because both of those components were present."

Hendricks confirmed during cross examination that Dean was not offered his Miranda rights during the interview, which lasted three hours and 17 minutes. 

"My client didn't admit to a homicide, but certainly there were statements he made which are not voluntary. And they're not voluntary if they use those kind of tactics," Hendricks said.

Wayne County sheriff's investigators began to interview Dean in the Dumas police station after that. Detective Sgt. Tammy Ryndock said she and another sergeant did read Dean his Miranda rights. Ryndock also told Damelio the interview continued without Dean acknowledging he wanted the conversation to continue without his attorney in attendance.

"I think the evidence and the proof went in exactly as I expected," Callanan said, who seeks to have all aspects of the recorded interviews presented in the case she will make. "Now the recorded interviews will be left for the judge to review."

In two of the three conversations, the first with federal and state authorities in Dumas, and separately with a sheriff's deputy in Kansas at the scene of an MVA, in which Dean crashed the rental vehicle authorities say he used to travel to Sodus for the homicides, Dean admitted to wanting "to bullet in his head."

A Wayne County judge will make his ruling on whether those interviews will be admitted as part of the evidence in the case against Dean next month. He is due to return to court April 11.