Calif. Death Row Mestizo Charged in 1988 Killings

[White Boy]

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0406/323496.html

Calif. Death Row Inmate Charged in 1988 Killings
Sa****ay April 29, 2006 2:52pm

Fairfax (AP) - A California death row inmate linked to three Virginia killings by DNA evidence was transferred to the state Friday to face charges in three 1988 killings.

Alfredo R. Prieto, 40 was charged in Fairfax County (website - news) with crimes including capital murder, rape and handgun violations in the shooting deaths of Rachel Raver and Warren Fulton, both 22. Raver was also sexually assaulted.

He is also charged in Arlington County Capital with murder, rape, abduction and other crimes in the 1988 death of Veronica Jefferson, 24.

Prieto was linked to both cases through DNA evidence, Fairfax County police said. Cold Case detectives used the Virginia DNA database and got a match with
Prieto last summer. He was indicted in November.

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Alfredo Prieto (image link)


Rachael Raver


Warren Fulton (image link)

Inmate guilty in '88 slayings of Yorktown High grad, boyfriend

A killer already awaiting execution in California may now face the death penalty in Virginia after a jury yesterday convicted him of capital murder in the 1988 slayings of Yorktown native Rachael Raver and her boyfriend.

Jurors relied on powerful DNA evidence against Alfredo Prieto that overcame the prosecution's lack of eyewitnesses, the murder weapon or any testimony about how Prieto met up with the victims. The jury rejected the defense contention that mysterious hairs found on Raver's body pointed to a second attacker who could have been the actual killer.

The bodies of Raver and Warren Fulton were discovered in a wooded field in Reston, Va., on Dec. 6, 1988, two days after they were last seen leaving a Washington, D.C., bar. Both 22-year-olds had been shot in the back, and Raver had been sexually assaulted. The case was not solved until 2005, when Prieto's DNA matched the semen recovered from Raver's body.

The jurors' work is not done. After the verdict they began hearing evidence about whether the 41-year-old Prieto is mentally retarded - a condition that would bar a death sentence. If Prieto is found not mentally retarded, a third stage of the trial would be held for the jury to decide between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

The guilty verdict in Fairfax Circuit Court brought a measure of relief to the friends and relatives of the victims after years of uncertainty, but the trial has also been a stinging reminder of what was lost.

"As much as we look for some closure and healing from this, the pain will never rest, because we were all absolutely robbed of a treasure," said Barbara Shein, a longtime Yorktown neighbor of the Ravers' who is following the trial from her home in Florida. "We watched her grow up; we shared in her life. She was the most vivacious, happy, wonderful child. She was phenomenal."

Raver was a star soccer player at Yorktown High School, where she graduated in 1984. She played on the soccer team at George Washington University and stayed in the Washington area after getting her undergraduate degree earlier in 1988. She was planning to attend law school. She and Fulton, a GWU senior who was captain of the school's baseball team, began dating about three months before they were killed.

Prieto was sent to death row in California 16 years ago for the 1990 killing of a teenage girl. Virginia prosecutors believe he could be executed in the commonwealth long before his California appeals are exhausted.

The defense made the tactical decision to inform jurors that Prieto was on death row already and that he was also linked to another Virginia killing. In 1999, authorities said a DNA match showed that the same man who had raped Raver - at the time unidentified - had raped and killed Veronica Jefferson, an accountant for the Central Intelligence Agency, behind an elementary school in Arlington County seven months before Raver and Fulton were killed. The jury in Fairfax will hear details of that killing and the California case if the trial reaches the penalty phase.

Prieto's lawyers, Peter Greenspun and Jonathan Schapiro, argued that there was reasonable doubt about the killings as a result of so many unanswered questions and the loss by the state of hairs apparently from a black person recovered from Raver's body during the autopsy. They contend that the hairs proved a second man was involved and that the failure of the state to hold onto them so they could be properly tested should at least preclude a death sentence.

But Commonwealth Attorney Robert Horan Jr. countered that the suggestion a "mystery man" was there with Prieto was "nonsense." He offered the theory that Prieto intercepted the couple at gunpoint after they left the bar in Washington, forced them to drive to Reston and shot Fulton so he could rape Raver. He ordered Raver to undress, Horan suggested, and when she tried to run he shot her and then raped her as she lay dying.

The evidence regarding mental retardation focuses on more than just Prieto's IQ, which the defense contends is 66. An uncle testified yesterday that Prieto was exposed to pesticides as a young boy in the fields of El Salvador where his mother worked, suggesting the chemicals affected his mental development.

The prosecution will introduce evidence that Prieto's IQ may be low but that he made ample use of the law library at San Quentin Prison while on death row, is bilingual, and spoke intelligently about the war in Iraq and other matters with a Virginia detective when he was flown from California.

[Rasp]

Mistrial Declared in Prieto Double Murder Trial

Judge's Decision Comes After a Juror Sent a Letter Saying He Thought the Defendant Was Not Guilty

A Fairfax County judge today declared a mistrial in the capital murder trial of Alfredo R. Prieto, even though the jury had already convicted Prieto and was deliberating whether he could be executed for killing two people near Reston in 1988.



Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Dennis J. Smith explored every option with the prosecutors and attorneys, and no one mentioned the word "mistrial" during more than two hours of discussions. But it was the unmistakable elephant in the room after one of the jurors sent a detailed letter yesterday saying that he strongly felt that Prieto was not guilty of murdering Rachael A. Raver and Warren H. Fulton III, and that he wanted to be dismissed from the jury.

The jury convicted Prieto on June 18 of two counts of capital murder, one count of rape and three other felonies. The trial had moved into a second stage, in which Prieto's lawyers were trying to prove that he was mentally retarded. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a retarded defendant may not be executed. If the jury found he was not retarded, then the trial would have moved to the penalty phase, and a final decision on whether Prieto should receive a death sentence.

Closing arguments in the second stage were held Wednesday. The jury deliberated for seven hours Thursday and took Friday off. After two hours yesterday, the foreman sent a note saying the jury appeared deadlocked on the question of retardation. A holdout juror, Aldo Davico Jr., sent a second note that his decision "this time" was "firm and final and deliberation has crossed the line into peer pressure. Please end this deliberation."

That note alone sent the trial into turmoil. After 90 minutes of consideration, Smith called the jury in and told them to go to lunch, then return and try to reach a verdict again.

But Davico evidently went to a computer and typed out a full-page, single-spaced letter that denounced his fellow jurors and said there was "absolutely no evidence provided or proven beyond a reasonable doubt" that Prieto had committed murder. Davico said the prosecution, led by Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr., had proved that Prieto had raped, because Prieto's semen was found at the scene, but nothing else. The prosecution acknowledged that DNA was the crux of their case, and there were no witnesses or other direct evidence tying Prieto to the shootings of Raver and Fulton, both 22.

Davico said he regretted going along with the 11 other jurors on the guilty verdict, but now would not go along with them on mental retardation. He felt Prieto was retarded; the others did not, he said. He said the other jurors' reaction to his view "was like a pack of lions protecting their kill."

Smith sent the jury home almost immediately after receiving Davico's letter. Then he reconvened at 9 a.m. today, and asked both sides what he should do.

Horan suggested bringing back one of the three alternate jurors, who were dismissed when the jury began its deliberations, and allowing that juror to either re-hear the mental retardation evidence, or join the jury in new deliberations over whether Prieto was guilty in the first place.

Defense lawyer Peter D. Greenspun said the jury's failure to reach a unanimous verdict on the retardation issue created a hung jury, and that Smith should simply sentence Prieto to life in prison.

Smith rejected both ideas. He said he didn't think state law allowed him to recall an alternate juror once deliberations had begun, and especially after a verdict had been reached.

And he said Greenspun's idea might apply if the jury was in the sentencing phase and couldn't reach a verdict. But the mental retardation phase was a separate stage, and the fairly new state law did not say how to deal with a hung jury in this stage, the judge said.

While the discussions were continuing in the courtroom, Davico sent another note this morning. Smith did not read it aloud, but said it "highlighted the dissension" in the jury room.

Smith said Davico clearly had committed juror misconduct, both by not sticking to his beliefs in the guilt deliberations, and then disregarding the judge's instruction yesterday to return and deliberate with the other jurors.

"Based on all the circumstances," Smith concluded reluctantly, "I find there is no less drastic remedy than to declare a mistrial." The trial was in its sixth week.

Davico, escorted out of the courthouse by a sheriff's deputy, declined to comment. The rest of the jury stayed around and met with the families of the victims in the locked courtroom for about 45 minutes. Deputies then took them out a rear entrance. The family members, including Raver's mother, Fulton's parents and brother, and the mother of Tina Jefferson -- another woman allegedly raped and killed by Prieto, but in Arlington, not Fairfax -- declined to comment.

Prieto, 41, already is on death row in California for the 1990 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl. But his appeals are expected to drag on there for another 10 to 15 years, and so Horan elected to extradite him to Virginia in hopes that he could be tried, convicted and executed in five years or so.

The lawyers will return on Friday morning to set a new trial date.

[Whitebear]

Fairfax Jury Calls for Two Death Sentences


Alfredo R. Prieto


A Fairfax County jury told Alfredo R. Prieto yesterday that he should die for killing a young couple on a field near Reston nearly two decades ago. There were no witnesses to the crime, but prosecutors believe Warren H. Fulton III was on his knees when Prieto shot him in the back. Then Prieto shot Fulton's girlfriend, Rachael A. Raver, and raped her as she lay dying.

Virginia will now contend with California to see which would be the first to get Prieto, 42, to the death chamber. In 1992, Prieto was convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in Ontario, Calif., but his appeals could stretch nearly 10 more years. In Virginia, they could be exhausted in five.

The families of Fulton and Raver were in the courtroom yesterday to hear, at long last, the jury give its verdict: two death sentences. The victims were just 22 when their bodies were discovered Dec. 6, 1988, in a vacant lot along Hunter Mill Road. Raver had graduated the previous spring from George Washington University, and Fulton was a senior there and the captain of its varsity baseball team.

The jury deliberated eight hours over two days last week, then came back yesterday with a verdict after deliberating 45 minutes more. Prieto blinked rapidly as the death sentences were announced.

"I'm relieved and very happy, because justice has been done," said Veronica Raver, Rachel's mother.

The death sentences will be imposed or reduced to a life sentence without parole May 23 by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows. The trial was the longest in Fairfax.


Two Death Sentences In '88 Fairfax Killings

Alfredo R. Prieto

Prieto, 42, was convicted in February of the rape and murder of Rachael A. Raver and the murder of Warren H. Fulton III, both 22, in December 1988.

Prieto's attorneys then tried to convince the jury that the defendant, with an IQ of about 70, was mentally retarded and not eligible for the death penalty. After three weeks of testimony, the jury rejected the retardation defense and said Prieto should die for both killings.

Prieto is on death row in California for the 1990 rape and killing of 15-year-old Yvette Woodruff in Ontario, Calif. As a result of his incarceration there, his DNA was entered into a nationwide DNA data bank.

In 2005, that data bank provided a hit out of the blue on the DNA left at the scene of Raver's and Fulton's slayings near Hunter Mill Road on Dec. 4, 1988. Prieto is suspected in two other slayings in Arlington and Prince William counties.

[Gman]

This filthy spic should have been executed years ago!!! Do it today!!!! How evil can you get??? He is worse than a nigger if that is possible!!!!