Category: DEFENCE DISASTER
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Ballistics Bollocks?
“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…
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False Confessions?
“But he literally confessed!” During the preliminary hearing, Richard Ramirez’s defence team asked Judge Nelson to listen to an hour-long taped police interview from the day he was arrested. Ramirez had repeatedly demanded a lawyer but the police refused and continued questioning him. This violated his Miranda rights. Apparently, Ramirez said some things that could…
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Eight Richard Ramirezes
The unreliability of fingerprint forensics was previously discussed in Kaycee’s article on the Vincow Incident. Vincow’s was the only murder scene that supposedly linked Ramirez to a crime scene – or at least the outside of it – for the incriminating print was on a window screen. This was a latent print (invisible to the…
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Spill-Over
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: They wanted…
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Serial Delusions
“A series of crimes involves distinctive features, offences or signature mark to indicate that particular individual likely committed all of the crimes. Distinctive features of a modus operandi include cause of death, type of weapon used, or victim. By definition, a series of crimes requires similarity among the criminal acts; crimes linked together because of…
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The Dentist Conundrum and the Failed Alibi
This post was originally going to be called ‘the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth’, but tooth is in place of truth and what is the truth? The Ramirez case is a mess on so many levels; all we can do is pick it apart and try to rebuild it in a…
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The Shoe Prints: Avia, a Cinderella Story
*Some images are better viewed on a desktop due to size and for clarity* “I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, the haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards. Truly the trematodes of the earth, each of one his own legal profession.” Richard Ramirez, taken from transcripts during his…
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The Monster Under The Bed
“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.” Malcom X In the summer of 1985, Los Angeles was in the grip of fear from a spate of seemingly random and brutal killings, all committed by one man, the infamous “Night Stalker”. America in the 70s…
Expendable For A Cause. 