The state Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence of "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez, who is on death row for 13 murders he committed during a crime spree that terrorized the Southland in the 1980s.
In a 104-page ruling, the state's highest court unanimously rejected Ramirez's claim that numerous errors were made in his trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Ramirez, who is now 46 and on death row at San Quentin State Prison, was sentenced to die for the crimes after a high-profile trial.
Along with the murders, he was convicted of 30 other counts -- including attempted murder, rape and first-degree burglary -- for the nighttime killings between June 1984 and August 1985 that made the self-proclaimed devil worshipper one of California's most notorious criminals.
Ramirez's appellate attorney, Geraldine S. Russell, told the California Supreme Court at a hearing in June that Ramirez did not receive a fair trial.
Among the defense's contentions were that two of Ramirez's trial attorneys, Daniel Hernandez and Arturo Hernandez, were not qualified for such a massive case, that Ramirez's mental competence should have been probed, and that the trial court erred in rejecting his motion for a change of venue in his trial.
Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno, writing on behalf of the panel, rejected all of those claims.
Ramirez committed murders in Glassell Park, Rosemead, Whittier, Monterey Park, Monrovia, Arcadia, Glendale, Sun Valley and Diamond Bar. His crime spree also extended to San Francisco and Orange County, where an engineer was shot but survived an attack in which his fiancee was raped.
In one slaying, the former drifter from El Paso gouged out a woman's eyes. Just over a year after being caught by a group of angry East Los Angeles residents, he called a guard over to his jail cell and showed photographs of two of the murder victims.
At his sentencing hearing, Ramirez rocked back and forth and turned to grin at the audience, vowing that he would be "avenged."
"You maggots made me sick, hypocrites one and all. We are all expendable for a cause, and no one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world which kill in the name of God and country and for whatever else they deem appropriate," Ramirez said then.
"You don't understand me," he said just before being sentenced to death. "You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil."
Hillary thinks the same thing. 
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