After a night of drinking and dancing at a Garden Grove bar, Richard Ramirez lured a female acquaintance to an alley behind the establishment, where he raped, sodomized, and stabbed his victim 19 times, leaving her to bleed to death. Ramirez was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. A prosecution witness testified “that Ramirez had raped her at knife-point years earlier and cut her face in a similar manner to the way [the dead women's face] was cut,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
When Ramirez murdered the 22-year-old bank teller, he “was on parole for previous convictions for rape, possession of a concealed weapon and receiving stolen property,” making him “a poster child for the death penalty,” said California Deputy Attorney William Wood, currently representing the state and defending Ramirez’ conviction.
The murder took place in 1983, and Ramirez was sentenced to death in 1985. Now, the state may have to release or re-try him because U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall ruled “that the jury foreman — now an FBI agent — deliberately lied about his employment status and failed to disclose that he was already a candidate for a job with the bureau.” Judge Marshall is a Carter appointee. Deputy Attorney Wood disagrees with that assessment, saying, “I thought he [the juror in question] was a very sincere, credible, honest witness who didn’t have any particular desire to get on the case one way or the other.” The murdered bank teller did not return phone calls seeking her opinion on the matter.
The presiding judge at Ramirez’ trial, Donald McCartin, was dismayed at the order to overturn, exclaiming “No, no, no,” when he was told of Judge Marshall’s decision. McCartin said he was upset because of the strength of the evidence against Ramirez. The murdered bank teller was unavailable for comment.
California’s once suspended death penalty was re-instituted on January 1, 1974. Prior to that time, the state had executed 709 prisoners, just under a six-per-year average. Since 1974, we’ve put to death a paltry 13, and currently have 669 in the Death Row population. At this rate, murderers sentenced to death will have to live 500 years before they get their due. The unwillingness to carry out the ultimate sentence is itself a miscarriage of justice, adding to the carnage on our streets, increasing the cost of law enforcement, and providing too many opportunities for brutal murderers like Ramirez to go free.
Thanks to several highly respected recent studies we now know that capital punishment deters violent crime, something we covered this in Moses Had it Right. Failing to execute the condemned, and even delaying executions, dramatically increases murder rates.
Warehousing prisoners on Death Row costs $90,000 per year more than the already high cost of imprisonment. Every year California spends multiplied millions on those 669 condemned men and women. Here’s a suggestion: use that money to create courts and hire judges and defense lawyers dedicated to processing the nearly endless appeals current law affords these maggots. Trimming the appeal process down to 9 or 10 months would save money and innocent lives. Only Carter appointed judges would oppose the idea.
Since the Miranda decision in 1966, bleeding heart liberals have been sponsoring and passing legislation making it harder to arrest, convict, and bring to justice the criminal element among us. Somewhere along the appeals trail, evidence appears that exonerates the condemned. The arresting officer mishandled evidence. A juror misspoke. A defense lawyer failed to make a motion. There’s always something a crafty lawyer can dig up. No one wants to execute an innocent person, but the appeals process should adhere to the legal notion of “swift” punishment, a concept known to reduce crime.
And would someone please tell me why a juror’s false statement about his employment trumps the brutal murder of an innocent woman?
Which brings me to another special Southern Californian, Michael Thomas Crawford. An admitted gang member, Crawford had some lofty life goals. He wanted to enhance his street name — Terminator. He coveted a teardrop tattoo (something gang murderers hang on their bodies like World War II bomber crews used to paint bombs on their planes, one for each sortie, but in Crawford’s case, one for each murder). And, he wanted to elevate his standing in the gang. To accomplish this trifecta, Crawford walked up to a total stranger and shot him point blank in the face, killing the 50-year-old instantly. Unfortunately, a naive judge sentenced the coward to 60-years to life, playing right into Crawford’s aspirations.
What the judge apparently fails to grasp is that for incorrigible miscreants like Crawford, imprisonment is a promotion, elevating his gang status. I’ve actually had small-time gang-bangers tell me they covet jail time for that very reason. Crawford will flourish in the gang culture present in every prison in America. Neither he nor his gangland buddies will be deterred by his sentence; their lives of crime will continue. There is only one proper sentence for the Crawford’s of this world — swift and sure execution. Even maggots want to live.
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Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Death Penalty, Video