Jury finds Guandique guilty
A jury on Monday convicted Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique of killing Chandra Levy in 2001.
The jury of three men and nine women deliberated for a little more than three days before announcing its verdict, which caps one of the nation's longest-running and most relentlessly chronicled murder mysteries.
The two first-degree felony murder convictions subject Guandique to a potential sentence of 30 years to life in prison, as the District of Columbia does not have the death penalty.
Guandique's sentencing will come later, following additional court proceedings. The fearsomely tattooed 29-year-old is already serving a prison sentence for attacking two other women in Washington's Rock Creek Park.
Rock Creek Park is where, jurors agreed, Guandique killed Levy on May 1, 2001, during an attempted robbery and kidnapping. Two women who survived their own 2001 attacks by Guandique helped convict him, with their compelling testimony during the trial that began Oct. 25.
"He grabbed me from behind and held a knife to my face," recounted Christy Wiegand, now a 35-year-old attorney with two children. "He brutally attacked me, and dragged me to an isolated area."
Guandique's other known surviving victim, Halle Shilling, likewise recounted how she "felt an incredible thud" when Guandique jumped her from behind while she was jogging. Shilling, now a mother of three living in Southern California, and Wiegand were both able to fight Guandique off.
Wiegand and Shilling were both also considerably bigger than the 24-year-old Levy.
In addition to the testimony by Wiegand and Shilling, prosecutors benefited from the firmly spoken recollections of prison inmate Armando Morales. A former gang member, who is still serving time on drug charges, Morales testified that Guandique confessed to him in 2006 that he had killed Levy.
"He told me he spotted her over there at the park," recounted Morales, who shared a prison cell with Guandique for six weeks. "She was alone, and she had on one of those waist pouches. He decided to rob her. He said he hid in the bushes ... he ran up behind her and grabbed her from behind. He said he dragged her into the bushes.
"He said by the time he had dragged her into the bushes, she had stopped struggling," Morales added. "He said he never meant to kill her."
Levy's mother, Susan Levy, attended most of the trial and was present during the reading of the verdict.
Levy had finished graduate studies and a federal Bureau of Prisons internship when she disappeared. She was planning to take a May 5 Amtrak train back home to California's San Joaquin Valley, trial testimony revealed.
The 10 days of testimony shed considerable light on Levy's life and times. Witnesses told of Levy's physical fitness habits, the color of her clothing and the traces of her final Internet browsing that ended shortly before 1 p.m. on May 1, 2001.
Most intimately, Levy's semen-spotted underwear examined by the FBI confirmed that she had had a sexual relationship with then-U.S. Rep. Gary Condit of California. Some of Levy's final Internet searches focused on Condit and his family members, according to trial testimony.
"I was suspicious of him," Levy's father, Robert Levy, testified. "He was a primary suspect in our minds."
In the trial's most anticipated moment, Condit testified for about two hours, during which time he denied killing Levy but refused to admit to an affair with the much younger woman. Guandique's defense attorneys specifically sought to cast suspicion on Condit during their closing arguments Tuesday.
Of the 40 prosecution witnesses, only Morales directly connected Guandique to Levy. Prosecutors did not call other prison snitches previously cited by investigators as having heard Guandique confess.
Prosecutors lacked any DNA, fingerprint, fiber or other physical evidence connecting Guandique to Levy or the wooded Rock Creek Park hillside where her skeletal remains were found in May 2002. There were no eyewitnesses.
Prosecutors also didn't get a chance to cross-examine Guandique, who listened to the translated trial proceedings through a headset. His aggressive attorneys from the D.C. Public Defenders Service, Santha Sonenberg and Maria Hawilo, did not put the Spanish-speaking, middle-school dropout on the stand.
Prosecutors also faced the burden of prior law enforcement errors.
A litany of prior law enforcement efforts hindered prosecutors. An apartment security tape wasn't seized in time. A flawed park search left Levy's skeletal remains exposed for many months to the elements, wearing away evidence. Condit, in a moment that could have not helped prosecutors, bashed investigators' work.
"I was beginning to feel they were somewhat incompetent," Condit testified.
The first team of D.C. detectives and FBI special agents who investigated Levy's disappearance starting in 2001 did not testify, nor did the detectives who took over the cold case in 2007.
In September 2008, the new team of detectives questioned Guandique and searched his cell at U.S. Penitentiary Victorville, a maximum-security facility near California's Mojave Desert. Following further investigation, police arrested Guandique in March 2009 on an assortment of murder and other charges.
Over time, charges came and went. Prosecutors added accusations that Guandique sought to obstruct justice by threatening potential witnesses, but then these charges were dropped. On the day they rested their case, Nov. 10, prosecutors also dropped two charges relating to attempted sexual assault.
By the time the jurors began deliberating Wednesday morning, the charges against Guandique were limited to two counts of felony murder.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/11/22...#ixzz162OJ6D5y
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