Expendable For A Cause.

The psychiatric report by Anne Evans – briefly covered here – highlighted some of Richard Ramirez’s obstructive behaviour towards his appellate lawyers and his would-be defence team for his San Francisco trial (that never happened). Evans did not believe it was directed at any particular attorney – all of them were subjected to Ramirez’s incoherent outbursts, paranoia and self-destructive behaviour.

Evans observed that Ramirez harboured a lot of anger and mistrust towards others in addition to a persecution complex, which she put down to paranoia caused by his previous experience in the Los Angeles trial. She wrote:

“Ramirez’s prior experiences with the legal system have contributed to his superficially adequate legal knowledge and courtroom orientation. Nonetheless, in one response to a basic question about what the defendant does during the trial, Mr. Ramirez’s irrationality leaks through: “Sit and watch the whole facade – the stupidness of it. You have lay persons giving legal jargon that they don’t go to school for even and pretend to do scientific stuff.” When I asked to whom he was referring, his response was, “The jury!””

Declaration of Anne Evans, Document 16-7.

While it is true that his legal knowledge was “superficially adequate” – he never fully understood the intricacies of his trial – Evans seemed incredulous that Ramirez described courtroom personnel as “imposters”, referred to his trial as a façade and criticised the jury’s lack of scientific knowledge. She denounced it as “irrational”.

Ramirez indisputably suffered from paranoid delusions – eleven psychiatrists independently came to that conclusion – but Anne Evans erred in assuming his opinions regarding the trial were delusions. Some of his paranoia was very much based on reality. Throughout this blog we have demonstrated the lack of evidence in every single Night Stalker case – if Ramirez truly was innocent, then “kangaroo court” is accurate. Ramirez’s defence lawyers, Arturo Hernandez and Daniel Hernandez were underqualified, and Arturo abandoned Ramirez. Then along came Ray Clark to help the foundering defence. Clark may as well have prosecuted Ramirez himself. To believe they were somehow imposters is not too big a stretch of the imagination – they may as well have been.

What Ramirez said about the jurors being “lay persons” is entirely correct – jurors are ordinary members of the public, coming from all kinds of professions, but few are educated in law and science. The Night Stalker jurors were no more rational than he was in some cases, for example Chakalit Harris and Cynthia “Cindy” Haden believed they were going to be “picked off one by one,” after the murder of fellow juror Phyllis Singletary. Several of them genuinely believed he was possessed by demons. Haden famously fell in love with Ramirez after sentencing him to death despite doubts. All of them suffered paranoid nightmares and locked their houses down, with some buying guard dogs – to protect themselves from a prisoner.

Generally speaking, the whole trial was a media circus, and Ramirez knew he had been tried and convicted by the media before he had even been arraigned. The mayor of Los Angeles County even said he did not need a trial. His belief that “everyone was against him” was mostly true.

The same goes for Evans’ observations about Ramirez’s heightened sense of betrayal. His obsessive attempts to control interactions between his attorneys, psychiatrists and his family and friends was borne out of real-life events: his ‘friend’ Cuba became a police informant after he was named as the prime suspect. Jesse Perez told the police he killed William Doi (Mrs Doi did not believe it was Ramirez), and Felipe Solano lied that thousands of stolen items in his possession had come from Ramirez. Other friends in northern California whom Ramirez had known since his youth – Donna Myers, and Deleen and Earl Gregg – reported him to police after happily receiving stolen goods from him. Even Armando Rodriguez, a childhood friend from El Paso, gave up his name – albeit after being beaten by the police (Falzon claims Rodriguez attempted to give Ramirez an alibi for the murders in both cities). Nobody spoke up for him. Ramirez had no reason to trust anybody ever again.

Combined with the paranoia of his psychotic condition, this mass betrayal led him to sabotage attempts by his new lawyers to develop alibis – he told potential defence witnesses not to speak to his attorneys. Although Evans claimed to have studied his case extensively, she relied on inaccurate biographies and was far too quick to assume his opinions were part of his illness and she invalidated his real fears. In her defence, it is likely that she knew nothing of the farcial nature of his trial; new evidence cannot be submitted to automatic direct appeals. This meant that Anne Evans would have been completely unaware of how flimsy the evidence was – Lisa DiMeo only examined the shoe evidence in 2004. The blood and fingerprint evidence must have been pending examination at evidentiary hearings in the 2000s. With his psychologists left unaware, no wonder he refused to open up.

-VenningB-