Thread: N.J. court tosses rape case because prosecutors revealed defendant's immigrant status

N.J. court tosses rape case because prosecutors revealed defendant's immigrant status

Jan 18; Posted Jan 18


Alexis Sanchez-Medina

New Jersey's highest court on Thursday threw out the conviction of an undocumented immigrant accused of serial sexual assault in part because prosecutors revealed at trial he was in the country illegally.

The state Supreme Court found Alexis Sanchez-Medina, who was serving more than 10 years on charges he attacked four women in the summer of 2012, did not receive a fair trial because the disclosure of his immigration status may have prejudiced the jury.

The justices also ruled jurors should have gotten instructions on how to consider the testimony of the single eyewitness identifying Sanchez-Medina, who maintained police had gotten the wrong man.

"Together, those errors undermined defendant's right to a fair trial," Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in the unanimous opinion. "They raise serious questions about whether the outcome was just, particularly in light of the strength of the evidence presented."

Rabner said the evidence against Sanchez-Medina was "not overwhelming" and the court had "no choice" but to vacate the conviction due to errors by the trial judge and the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.

According to court records, four women were attacked in Englewood between July and August 2012, though only one of them said she could identify her assailant.

Each of the women said they were attacked by surprise or from behind by a man who then groped them or grabbed their genitals, the records show.

One of the women, identified only by the initials R.D., picked Sanchez-Medina as her attacker from a photo array.

Sanchez-Medina denied wrongdoing during an interrogation, and although he made "certain admissions" to having contact with some of the women, he later recanted, court records show.

Prosecutors' case relied heavily on the single eyewitness, but courts in New Jersey and across the country have found such testimony unreliable and require certain instructions on how much weight jurors should give it.

Those instructions should have been given in Sanchez-Medina's case, the court found.

At trial, county prosecutors got Sanchez-Medina to admit he had immigrated illegally from Honduras and, although his attorney objected, the judge did not strike it from the record. The prosecutor's office later conceded on appeal that the question was improper, according to the decision.

"Only in a rare case will it be appropriate for a prosecutor to elicit testimony about a defendant's immigration status," Rabner wrote in his decision, saying in most cases such information "has no bearing" on the issue of guilt or innocence and could taint the jury "because of the inflammatory nature of the issue."

Tamar Yael Lerer, who argued the case for the state Public Defender's Office, said the decision "made clear that there's no place in our legal system to use a criminal defendant's immigration status to prejudice a jury against him."

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment on the case.

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf...85bc402c1b83f6

Disgusting, disgraceful and un-American. He should have gotten the death penalty.
Being an illegal alien should not have gotten him out.

Disgusting! No papers = no right to stay! Commit a crime, do your time and GET OUT!