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Thread: Ronnie Vang - California Death Row

  1. #1

    Ronnie Vang - California Death Row

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    Juries convict cousins in musician's south-area murder

    2 separate Sacramento Superior Court juries today convicted the cousins Ronnie Vang and Joson Vang of 1st-degree murder in the June 23, 2009, shooting death of Keith Fessler in his Meadowview area home.

    Ronnie Vang, 32, is facing the death penalty as a result of the verdicts. Vang had a just been released from prison on a prior burglary conviction, and witnesses said he told them he shot and killed Fessler during the course of a break-in at the man's home because he did not want to be identified.

    The penalty phase of Ronnie Vang's trial has been scheduled for Jan. 6.

    Fessler, 44, was a Kaiser-Permanente technician and a long-time musician who collected guitars. Prosecutors said the Vangs stole several of the instruments and then sold some of them to a local pawn shop. The pawn shop owner alerted police and the cousins were soon arrested.

    No sentencing date has yet been set on Joson Vang, 27, who is facing a life term with no chance of parole.

    Besides the murder, the 2 defendants were both convicted of robbery, burglary and the theft of Kessler's car. Ronnie Vang was convicted on the additional charges of arson and the attempted burglary of a house next door to the Kessler residence.

    (Source: The Modesto Bee)

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Jury to consider death penalty for musician’s killer

    By Andy Furillo
    The Sacramento Bee

    Some of the jurors closed their eyes and swayed to the gentle rhythm of the guitar piece composed by the man who was shot and killed by the murderer sitting across from them.

    The title of the song was “Spring by the Willows,” and the soft picking and the smooth chord structure laid over a measured syncopation stood in contrast to the manner in which Keith Fessler’s passion for this world was violently stilled by a burglar who didn’t want any witnesses who could send him back to prison.

    On Tuesday , the song was entered as an exhibit in Sacramento Superior Court in the penalty phase of Ronnie Vang’s murder trial. Vang is the defendant the jurors convicted last month of special-circumstance murder in Fessler’s death. The conviction qualified Vang, 32, for the death penalty, and now the same jury is being asked to decide whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.

    Deputy District Attorney Valerie Brown introduced Fessler’s music to the jury as part of a package of victim impact evidence. A friend gave the voiceover to the soundtrack, telling the jury that the 44-year-old Fessler “wanted to shoot out good vibes to the world” through his music.

    “He was really into composition,” Todd Horton testified. “He was just starting to get into trusting his voice in public.”

    Fessler’s music, Horton said, “is the reason I was drawn to Keith. He was so gentle, a different kind of person.” Fessler was also “the happiest guy I ever met,” Horton said.

    By day, Fessler worked as a technician for Kaiser Permanente, repairing high-tech medical equipment such as MRI machines. In his off-hours, he played guitar and wrote music and liked to windsurf on San Francisco Bay. He also was one of three sons in a tight-knit military family that moved around the country a bit while Fessler was growing up.

    Authorities found Fessler’s body June 23, 2009, shot and killed execution style in a bedroom of his home in the 7400 block of Carella Drive, in the Meadowview area. According to evidence at trial, Vang and his cousin and co-defendant, Joson Vang, 27, were burglarizing his house when Fessler walked in on them.

    They tied him up and laid him on a bed where Ronnie Vang shot him in the back of the head. Then they stole his guitars and windsurf boards and set his house on fire. Witnesses testified that Vang said he shot Fessler because he had just gotten out of prison and didn’t want to go back.

    Joson Vang also was convicted in the case, but is not facing the death penalty. He is scheduled for sentencing Friday.

    Fessler’s younger brother, Eric, testified Tuesday that the two of them had spoken just a few days before the murder. He said they were planning a vacation in Wisconsin, where Eric lives. Instead, Eric Fessler testified, he had to figure out a way to tell his boys, who were then 4 and 3, about what happened to their uncle. Four years later, Eric Fessler said, he still hasn’t told them the whole story.

    In picture after picture displayed on the courtroom screen, Eric Fessler narrated photos where his smiling brother, with his hair cut into a mullet and wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses, accompanied his nephews on boat rides in Florida and at poolside at the home of the boys’ grandparents.

    “Family was his life,” Eric Fessler said. As for his Keith’s nephews, “He would do everything he could to be there for them, to be an influence. As much as he could, he would be around them.”

    It was the jury’s finding that Ronnie Vang murdered a witness that made him a candidate to become the fifth murderer from Sacramento County sent to death row in the last 10 years. Vang had been released from Folsom State Prison only four days before the killing, according to the prosecutor. He had been imprisoned for a parole violation on an underlying conviction of second-degree burglary.

    Brown, the deputy DA, said in court that Ronnie Vang was tested for drugs three days after he was paroled and one day before the murder of Keith Fessler. She said the test came back positive, but that the results weren’t returned to parole officials until after the killing.

    Vang’s penalty-phase attorney, William White, called the head of the county’s jail’s psychiatric services to testify Tuesday that the defendant had been diagnosed as suffering from depression and methamphetamine abuse disorder.

    Dr. Gregory Sokolov said he never treated Ronnie Vang, but interviewed him in August and had reviewed reports on him. Sokolov said Vang was born in Portland and raised in Sacramento. According to Sokolov’s testimony, Vang began to have problems when his parents split up when he was young, and that he began smoking marijuana at age 10, then methamphetamine when he was 12.

    Sokolov described Vang as an everyday meth smoker until he was 16 and that he ran away from home and lived “almost a transient lifestyle” through his early teen years.

    When he was still a juvenile, a judge declared Vang “out of control” and placed him in Pennsylvania’s Glenn Mills Schools program for juvenile delinquents. Authorities at the facility outside Philadelphia said Vang responded well to their program, according to a letter White read to the court.

    Sokolov said Vang began using drugs again when he left the Glenn Mills Schools program and returned to Sacramento at age 19. Vang’s criminal record, presented to the court by the DA, showed that after his return he was convicted on five separate felonies, for car theft, twice for receiving stolen property, possession of drugs for sale and the second-degree burglary.

    White is expected to conclude his case today. The attorneys will then argue Thursday before Judge Steve White sends the case to the jury.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/07/605...#storylink=cpy

  3. #3
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    Jury sentences Ronnie Vang to death

    By Andy Furillo
    The Sacramento Bee

    The jury deemed Ronnie Vang a liar, but it was the mere circumstance of his shooting and killing of Keith Fessler that accounted for the panel’s recommendation Wednesday that the convicted murderer be sentenced to death.

    Vang’s lawyer worried last week that if the jury thought the defendant lied, it would be more likely to return the death penalty. It turned out that his execution slaying to eliminate the witness to the residential robbery was enough on its own to convince the panel that Vang’s life wasn’t worth sparing.

    “That’s what we tried to focus on, the severity of the crime,” one female juror said.

    Jurors returned their verdict on Vang after two days of deliberation on his penalty for the June 23, 2009, shooting death of the 44-year-old Fessler, a Kaiser Permanente technician whose hobbies included music and windsurfing.

    Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White scheduled Vang’s official sentencing date for Feb. 21.

    During Vang’s monthlong trial, witnesses said the 32-year-old defendant told acquaintances he shot and killed Fessler because he didn’t want to be identified in the burglary and returned to prison. He had been released from custody four days before the murder.

    Several of Fessler’s instruments, as well as his surf boards, were stolen in the burglary. Vang was later caught on a videotape selling one of the stolen guitars at a downtown pawn shop.

    Vang would be the fifth murderer from Sacramento County to be sentenced to death in the past decade.

    There are 746 prisoners on the state’s condemned inmate list, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. No inmates have been executed in California since 2006, amid a moratorium was imposed by former U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose over the state’s lethal injection process.

    Jurors on Dec. 4 convicted Vang and his cousin, Joson Vang, 27, of murder and six other felonies in the killing of Fessler. Joson Vang last Friday was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in his case.

    Ronnie Vang testified in the penalty phase of his trial last week and denied that he killed Fessler.

    “For me, I would say that he hurt himself,” one male juror said Wednesday, in assessing Vang’s testimony and its impact on the panel’s decision. “I didn’t feel he was truthful, or remorseful,” said the juror who declined to give his name.

    This juror and two otherswho also did not want their names published said they probably would have come back with a death verdict even if Ronnie Vang had not testified.

    Family members of Keith Fessler who attended every day of testimony in both the guilt and penalty phases of the trial have since left town and were not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

    Deputy District Attorney Valerie Brown said she spoke to the family by phone after the verdict and they were “relieved the process is over.”

    “We are extremely grateful to the jurors for their diligence,” Brown said in an emailed statement. “Undoubtedly, the manner in which Keith Fessler was killed in his own home, and the fact that Ronnie Vang had been released from prison only four days before the murder, had significant impact on the verdict. In the end, we feel justice was done.”

    Defense attorney Pete Harned, who represented Ronnie Vang during the guilt phase, said of the death penalty verdict, “There seemed to be but a single aggravating factor, and that one was really significant – the circumstances of the death.”

    Harned said he found the death verdict “disappointing, of course. But I understand.”

    William White, who represented Vang in the penalty phase, declined to comment.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/15/607...#storylink=cpy

  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Vang gets death penalty for Meadowview burglary-murder

    Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White today imposed the death penalty on Ronnie Vang for the June 23, 2009, murder of Keith Fessler during a burglary of the victim’s home.

    Jurors found that Vang, who had been released from prison four days earlier on a previous burglary conviction, shot and killed Fessler so there would be no witnesses to the daytime break-in at the Meadowview home of the victim. Fessler, 44, was a Kaiser Permanente technician who wrote and performed music and collected guitars.

    White told Vang that jurors recommended him for death based on the defendant’s decisions in “the series of moments, the countless series of moments” before the fatal shooting: his hog-tying of Fessler, who woke up in the middle of the burglary and wandered into it, the victim’s plea for Vang and his cousin to take what they wanted but to not shoot him, the decision to kill in order to eliminate the witness.

    “Those were tortuous moments for Keith Fessler,” White told Vang. “You had infinite opportunities to change your mind.”

    The jury on Dec. 4 convicted Vang, 32, of first-degree murder and six other felony counts. It recommended the death verdict on Jan. 15 after two days of deliberation in the penalty phase of the trial.

    The same jury also convicted Vang’s cousin, Joson Vang, 27, on the same counts that included the arson fire the two set on Fessler’s house after the burglary and murder. White sentenced Vang on Jan. 10 to life in prison with no chance of parole.

    “The loss of our son, Keith, has left a big empty hole,” Fessler’s mother, Diane, said in a written statement to the court. “The hole is filled with sadness, loneliness, sorrow. There is a missing parting our life, in our family. All of us feel his absence. We miss him.”

    Vang did not make a statement to the court.

    http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/25/635...#storylink=cpy
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  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    April 25, 2014

    Sacramento burglar sentenced to death for killing ‘a totally innocent victim’

    In case there was any question in Ronnie Vang’s mind, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White reminded the convicted killer Friday why he was about to join the other 745 inmates who have been sentenced to San Quentin’s death row as of April 2.

    “All murders are intrinsically horrible,” the judge told Vang, “but some murders are more horrific than other murders, and I think – having seen a lot of murder cases – that the difference has to do with the amount of time that goes into the moments preceding the murder.

    “Lots of murders are of the moment. They are sudden. They are spontaneous. They are ill-chosen acts. But they are not largely thought out.”

    It was the deliberations Vang went through in carrying out the murder of Keith Anthony Fessler during a June 2009 residential burglary that qualified the defendant to be only the fifth to be sentenced to death in Sacramento in the past decade.

    There was “a series of moments, a countless series of moments” where Vang had to stop and think about what he was doing, White said. At each juncture, Vang went forward, to where he executed – with two gunshots to the back the head – “a totally innocent victim, and somebody who was esteemed and highly regarded by apparently everybody who knew him, and (who) presented no threat of harm to you whatsoever,” the judge said from the bench.

    Vang was convicted Dec. 4 in the shooting death of Fessler, 44. The following month, a jury found the murder merited the death penalty because it was committed to eliminate a witness and took place during the course of a burglary.

    Out of prison only four days from a previous burglary conviction, Vang, 32, and his cousin, Joson Vang, 27, broke into Fessler’s home in the 7400 block of Carella Drive in the Meadowview area on the day of the killing. Fessler woke up during the daytime burglary. When Fessler confronted the burglars, Ronnie Vang and his cousin tied him up and threw him across a bed. A witness testified that Ronnie Vang told him Fessler told the intruders to take his stuff and pleaded for his life. Ronnie Vang then shot Fessler twice in the back of the head, the jury found.

    “You make a whole series of choices,” White told Vang, who sat impassively and declined to make a statement at the sentencing hearing. “You choose, instead of leaving, to stay. You choose, instead of letting him leave, unmolested by you and your co-defendant, you decide to hobble and hogtie him.”

    White said it’s plain that Vang, who was not wearing a mask and who didn’t want to go back to prison, did not want to leave anybody around who could identify him.

    “And you decide to kill Keith Fessler,” White said. “Those were tortuous moments for Keith Fessler, and you had infinite opportunities to change your mind. He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t presenting any threat to you. But you decided instead to put two bullets into him.”

    Born in Alabama, Fessler grew up in Sheboygan, Wis., before moving west and settling in Sacramento about 10 years before his death. He worked nights fixing MRI machines and other types of medical equipment at Kaiser Permanente. His real passion, however, was music, and he wrote and recorded his own songs and played several high-quality guitars. He also enjoyed windsurfing.

    After killing Fessler, Vang and his cousin stole the guitars and his surfboards. They then set fire to Fessler’s house and left in the victim’s car, which they also burned. They were arrested after Ronnie Vang tried to sell the guitars at a pawn shop. A video surveillance camera in the store recorded him as he walked in, strumming the guitar “like he was on a Sunday drive,” Deputy District Attorney Valerie Brown said in her opening statement at trial.

    A separate jury convicted the cousin on the same seven counts that were sustained against Ronnie Vang – murder, burglary, robbery, arson (two counts), attempted burglary, car theft. White sentenced Joson Vang to life in prison without parole in January.

    Fessler’s parents, Eldred Anthony Fessler and Dianne Fessler, attended every day of trial, along with their son, Craig, all of whom live in Florida. Another son, Eric Fessler, attended the beginning and the end of the trial. Members of the family made statements at Joson Vang’s sentencing, which occurred just before the jury returned the death penalty verdict on Ronnie Vang. They declined to return to Sacramento for Ronnie Vang’s sentencing.

    In a written statement to the court, Dianne Fessler recalled the pain of being told about her son’s murder and the difficulty of going to a city they did not know to make funeral arrangements. Then there was the insurance agent who “began calling us over and over and insisting we go to Keith’s house, the crime scene” and how they had to call a police detective to tell the agent to “quit hounding us.”

    Dianne Fessler said that in the year after her son’s death, she and her husband had to deal with as many as 80 emails and a similar number of phone calls in handling the details of their son’s death.

    “Each call requires repeating the death of our son,” she wrote. “Each call reopened the wound in your heart.”

    Keith’s death “left a big empty hole in me/us,” she wrote.

    “He was such a good son, brother, uncle, a huge part of our lives,” Dianne Fessler said. “He never missed calling on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or on our birthdays. He was so good to all of us, never raised his voice in anger, and was so helpful. We will never see him, hear his voice, talk with him, hear his laugh or be with him again.”

    http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/25/635...#storylink=cpy

  6. #6
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On May 1, 2017, counsel was appointed to represent Vang on direct appeal before the California Supreme Court.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...9SQCAgCg%3D%3D

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