This post will concentrate specifically on Claim 20 of the Writ of Habeas Corpus, filed in 2008: the trial court’s denial of the motion to sever unrelated incidents.
Facts: On September 30th, 1987, Richard’s counsel moved to sever counts compromising of fifteen incidents: forty-three charges and nineteen special circumstances. The grounds given were:
- The crimes were not connected in their commission.
- The offences were not cross-admissible.
They wanted to sever the charged crimes into eight separate trials, based on cross-admissibility of the evidence, as follows:
- Petersen and Abowath (common ballistics evidence)
- Hernandez/Okazaki, Yu and Kneiding (common ballistics evidence)
- Khovananth and Zazzara (common ballistics evidence)
- ** Higgins (absence of any cross-admissible evidence) ** see note
- Vincow (absence of cross-admissible evidence)
- Kneiding, Bennett, Bell/Lang, Cannon, Nelson, and Doi (similar shoe print evidence)
- Dickman (absence of cross-admissible evidence)
- Kyle (absence of cross-admissible evidence)
** On December 9th, 1987, the court amended the charges, as counts 19 and 20 – Higgins – were dropped. There was not enough evidence to charge Ramirez, as the only thing linking him to the murder of Patti Higgins was the unreliable eyewitness from Arcadia, who said she saw him with a cat and a tub of ice cream (!) a few blocks away. Unsurprisingly, this bizarre sighting was never substantiated. No physical evidence was present. **
The prosecution conceded this, realising that it would cast doubts on other counts, where the evidence was also highly sketchy, and may undermine their case against Richard.
The court so ordered.
Despite the charges being dropped and no conviction made, Ramirez is forever guilty of this crime, regardless in the eyes of the world.
Counsel for the prosecution argued that all counts were joined correctly and cross-admissible: all crimes were of the same class.
Motion denied!
The consequences of this denial were, for Richard, massive and devastating; for the prosecution, like all their Christmases had come at once.
The physical evidence against Richard Ramirez was relatively weak; they relied on the joinder of offences with perceived strong proof to those with none or more invalid. Thus, making the inferred guilt more plausible and likely to the jury. In contrast, the State would have had problems proving a connection between the incidents if this motion had been granted.
How did they do it?
It all seems so complete, so overwhelming, but is it? If we start to pull at the threads, the overall picture isn’t so obvious.
From the very beginning of the case, law enforcement had gone to some trouble to convince everyone that what was unique about the Night Stalker was his lack of modus operandi: he had no pattern. The prosecution had to do the opposite; they must convince a jury that there was a pattern, that all crimes were cross-admissible, and they would show how by linking crimes through ballistics, shoe print, unique wounding, and eyewitness testimony. For only through demonstrating this would a joinder be permitted.
In our previous posts we have shown how expert witnesses, retained by the habeas lawyers, examined the shoe print and ballistics evidence. Where the evidence presented by the prosecution was inaccurate and misleading. Please read the articles to avoid unnecessary repetition, but as a brief recap, the Avia prints were not unique and the firearms expert, in his declaration, advised that the ballistic evidence was faulty and needed retesting. This article discusses how it isn’t possible to even definitively prove that a certain bullet came from a certain gun.
Here’s a chart, showing where and how each offence was linked. It’s quite a web, with Ramirez trapped in the middle, as the evidence is woven around him. * A desktop is advisable to view clearly. *
Swipe through the gallery above, and as the layers are removed, it becomes apparent why the joinder was necessary for the prosecution. *Note: Neither Mabel Bell nor Florence Lang were restrained by handcuffs, nonetheless, this is an accurate depiction of the linked incidents as produced in court by the prosecution.
Partial prints are inconclusive, and the prints at the “uncharged” remain the last layer. It’s a grey area, with different law enforcement agencies employing various techniques and requirements regarding how many loops and ridges are considered admissible evidence in court. As explained in the highlighted post, it is not an exact science and could have been quickly challenged, but of course, it wasn’t.
We are left with the rolled prints at the uncharged incident, allegedly lifted by the “enterprising” Officer Wright, who conveniently had all the fingerprinting technology in his regular (but amazingly equipped) patrol car, and who managed to do all the required forensic work, without calling in the specially trained officers who would usually attend a burglary, bringing in the tools needed to carry out the job. And no one is claiming that Richard Ramirez was not a thief!
His attorneys should have been able to challenge all the evidence. Still, as we have shown, the defence counsel needed help investigating or developing a defence strategy. Something needed to be more forthcoming to challenge or defend the case.
I have to keep referring back to what is central to the theme of this blog, the lack of defence. Not guilt or innocence but a failure of the system.
To quote Lt Dan Cooke from LAPD:
“Now begins the hard work of tying him to all the other crimes we’re looking at”.
Lt Dan Cooke
As stated on our front page, shouldn’t that have been done already? If he was their only suspect? Primarily, he was already referred to as the Night Stalker by the slavering media.
His M.O was he had no M.O
To show a criminal identity via modus operandi, the evidence must show common marks, or “identifiers”, which together or singly show a “strong inference” that the defendant committed all the crimes so joined.
The People versus Bean
Richard’s case was so unusual and unique that once some evidence had linked him to one incident, the jury would presume his guilt on every charged crime. At the time of the court’s ruling, each joined offence was highly inflammatory, with the media already identifying him as the perpetrator of the four non-murder incidents. Before the farcical line-up, the police had already indicated to Carol Kyle that “the Night Stalker” would be there, adding to an already biased procedure.
The disparity between the strength of evidence between the murder and non-murder charges (remember, at this juncture, the prosecution holds those cards) would cause the impermissible “bootstrapping” or spill-over effects and inevitably lead to a conviction on all counts, regardless of the weak evidence.
By upholding the joinder, the trial court made it impossible for the jury to consider each count separately when weighing up the evidence, the inevitable spill-over, caused by the joining of all fifteen incidents, rendered them unable to compartmentalise. Putting this together with a total denial of effective defence at the guilt phase and lack of mitigation during the penalty phase, the likelihood of the jury considering evidence solely related to each separate offence was null and void.
The judicial economy was not an overriding concern. It should not have outweighed inflammatory evidentiary concerns or the spill-over effect. The court could have easily severed this case into four separate groups: the separate Vincow incident; those involving inflammatory evidence, such as mutilation and Satanism; incidents with minimal inflammatory evidence; and incidents in which no murders occurred.
Like this:
- The Zazzara, Bell/Lang, Cannon, Nelson, and Khovananth incidents.
- The Hernandez/Okazaki, Yu, Kneiding, and Abowath incidents.
- The Bennett, Kyle, Dickman, and Petersen incidents.
- The Vincow incident,
Even then, at this point, had Richard had a competent defence, a team capable of rebutting the charges, and providing their own expert witnesses, the evidence against him could have been challenged. This is one of the most infuriating things about this case and he, with his mental impairments, was seemingly oblivious, lacking the understanding that he was entitled to a strong defence.
Saying he was severely disappointed is a vast understatement, especially considering the implications. To properly examine the case, jurors must have both sides because that is how trials are supposed to work. What will they do if they are not shown anything in either defence or mitigation?
Had the defence counsel retained a criminal expert to show that the incidents were unrelated, the jury may not have been swept away by anger and revulsion. It may have been able to dispassionately categorise the incidents and considered more deeply that some of its members had specifically noted the eyewitness testimonies did not sound like Richard Ramirez at all.
The habeas lawyers did retain such an expert, and this is his conclusion:
A full breakdown of the findings of Steve Stong can be found HERE.
“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer”
Robert Frost
An uncomfortable truth.
~ Jay ~
Expendable For A Cause. 
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