Richard Raymond Ramirez
Prosecutors to seek death again in 1983 alley slaying
SANTA ANA – Orange County prosecutors will seek a second death penalty against a convicted rapist charged with sexually assaulting and murdering a 22-year-old woman in an alley behind a Garden Grove bar in 1983, the district attorney's office announced Monday.
The first death penalty handed down in 1985 by an Orange County judge to Richard Raymond Ramirez, now 52, was reversed on appeal by a Federal District judge in 2008.
Ramirez, who has a prior conviction for rape, is charged with special circumstances murder in the commission of rape and sexual assault, plus felony rape and a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a deadly weapon.
His second trial before an Orange County jury is scheduled to get under way on Jan. 6 before Superior Court Judge William Froeberg.
He is charged with killing Kim Gonzalez, 22, on the night of Nov. 20, 1983 outside Mr. Barry's Bar in Garden Grove after an evening of drinking when he accosted her in the alley as she left the bar.
Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin contends that Ramirez sexually assaulted Gonzales before he stabbed her 19 times. Gonzalez's body was found in the alley the next morning. She was naked from the waist down with her pants and underwear pulled down near her ankles and knees.
Fingerprints were later retrieved from a Budweiser beer bottle 15 feet from the victim's body and matched to Ramirez, prosecutors said.
He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in 1985.
But in February 2008, Federal District Court Judge Consuelo Marshall overturned Ramirez's conviction, ruling that a juror in the original trial failed to reveal he had filed an application to be a law enforcement officer, even though he was never asked by the defense attorney.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/ramir...ath-judge.html
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