GUILTY VA - Prince Rams, 15 mos, drowned in his Manassas home, 20 Oct 2012

[Rayemonde]

There might be a plea deal brewing?...

 

[MsFacetious]

Looks like just about everyone who could have screwed up did in this case.
Cops... judge... geez.
I doubt he'd take a plea deal, sounds like he will get away with it.

 

[0101ABA]

Judge denies bond in 2012 murder case still awaiting trial

A judge Wednesday denied bond to a Virginia man charged with capital murder in the 2012 death of his 1-year-old son even though he will have spent four years in jail awaiting trial.

Also at Wednesday's court hearing, prosecutors in the case against Joaquin Shadow Rams also said they stand "ready, willing and able" to charge Rams with the murders of two other people — his mother and his ex-girlfriend — in separate incidents stretching back to 2003.

http://www.thereporter.com/article/zz/20160316/NEWS/160316734

 

[BrownRice]

http://www.thereporter.com/article/zz/20160316/NEWS/160316734

Wow, that's crazy!

 

[Rayemonde]

Rms’s attorneys argued in one motion that investigators “sought out and elicited the testimony of at least two jailhouse snitches” after Virginia’s chief medical examiner reversed the initial autopsy finding of drowning and ruled that the child’s cause of death couldn’t be determined.

In Texas, the revelation of false testimony by a snitch against a man who was later executed led to the introduction of legislation to ban informant testimony in death penalty cases...

In Rams’s case, in Prince William County, Va., one of the informants, who pleaded guilty to the murders of three people in Manassas, Va., in 2011, reported frequent hallucinations and said he knew the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Another was diagnosed as a “malingerer” who was purposely lying to evade trial.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...12993a-ba28-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html

 

[0101ABA]

The long death penalty prosecution of Joaquin Rams in Prince William County, for allegedly drowning his toddler son in 2012, has taken another dramatic turn. Circuit Court Judge Craig D. Johnston, who had overseen the case since Rams's indictment in 2013, suddenly recused himself in June following a tragic death in the family. Then, after 2 other Prince William judges were appointed and also had to recuse, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows took over the case and held his first hearing in Manassas Wednesday.

The move brings a new judge to a death penalty case that already is unusual because the defendant is claiming actual innocence, and he has three witnesses who corroborate his claim. The case has seen 3 years' worth of pretrial maneuvering, including a rarely-used special grand jury to investigate Rams, a reversal of the official cause of death, the disclosure that four jailhouse informants are prosecution witnesses and a pledge by Prince William prosecutors to continue pursuing Rams even if he beats the current charges. But Bellows showed Wednesday that he was well-versed in the case, ruled on 2 somewhat complicated motions without hesitation, and said the trial date of Feb. 21 would stand.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...nly-steps-down-after-handling-it-for-3-years/

 

[OkieGranny]

http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/article_a5021e92-18de-55c5-87bd-5032b2c1adf4.html

Prosecutors in Northern Virginia have agreed not to seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing his 1-year-old son for the insurance money.

The agreement reached Friday between prosecutors and defense lawyers for Joaquin Rams also requires Rams to give up his right to a jury trial in favor of a bench trial.

Rams is scheduled to go on trial in March in the 2012 death of his son, Prince McLeod Rams.

 

[0101ABA]

Prosecutors intimidated key witness in Rams capital murder case, defense says

Prosecutors in Prince William County, Va., seeking to convict Joaquin Rams of capital murder, claim that Rams drowned his 15-month-old son to collect more than $500,000 in life insurance money on the boy. So a crucial defense witness for Rams is the insurance salesman, who has previously said that Rams only wanted a policy on himself, but that the salesman convinced him to buy extra policies for his toddler and his other, teenaged son.

But after a police detective and two Prince William prosecutors paid visits to the insurance salesman in New Jersey, telling him that Rams is “a sociopath” who “wants to kill the baby’s mother,” the salesman changed his story and no longer wants to testify, court records show. Now, on the eve of next week’s trial, Rams’s attorneys want a judge to prevent prosecutors from using the insurance policy as evidence, saying that allowing the evidence would allow the prosecution “to benefit from its own misconduct of improperly influencing a witness.”

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Prosecutors: Dad killed son to collect on insurance money

http://nbc4i.com/2017/03/13/prosecutors-dad-killed-son-to-collect-on-insurance-money/

Rams’ murder trial began Monday in Prince William Circuit Court, more than four years after 1-year-old Prince McLeod Rams died on a court-ordered, unsupervised visit with his father.

In the years since Prince’s death in October 2012, the case has taken a remarkable number of twists, including conflicting rulings from medical examiners on the cause of Prince’s death and a unique arrangement between prosecutors and the defense that took a potential death penalty off the table in exchange for Rams waving his right to a jury trial. A judge will now decide Rams’ guilt or innocence.

In opening statements Monday, Prosecutor James Willett told the judge that Rams “had firsthand experience” which life insurance payouts, receiving a $162,000 payment after his mother, Alma Collins, died in 2008.

Indeed, prosecutors now suspect Rams was responsible for his mother’s death, even though it was ruled a suicide. And they suspect he killed his former girlfriend, Shawn Mason, in 2003 – prosecutors say he tried unsuccessfully to collect on a life insurance policy after Mason was shot and killed.

A judge, though, ruled that evidence about the deaths of Collins and Mason cannot be introduced at Prince’s trial, though Willett referred to Collins’ death obliquely during opening statements.

But the case against Rams has holes. Most glaringly, the state’s chief medical examiner overruled an initial finding that Prince died by drowning. Prince’s official cause of death is now listed as undetermined. Both sides plan to present medical experts with dueling conclusions about how Prince died.

Jailhouse informant leads off Rams trial by refusing to testify

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/jailhouse-informant-leads-off-rams-trial-by-refusing-to-testify/2017/03/13/6c3780cc-0814-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.a8cd358c4290

Prosecutors often begin complex murder trials by building a chronology of events for the jury. But with Bellows already well aware of the facts of the case, veteran Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert chose to open the prosecution by calling Jose Reyes Alfaro, one of four jailhouse informants identified as possible witnesses against Rams.

“He may or may not testify,” Ebert said, after summoning Reyes Alfaro.

Reyes Alfaro testified that he had been in the same cell block as Rams in the Prince William jail, where Rams has been since January 2013. But when Ebert asked him what Rams told him, Reyes Alfaro said through an interpreter, “I have nothing to say about that.”

Ebert pressed him, but Reyes Alfaro responded, “I don’t wish to testify.”

Reyes Alfaro eventually asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Ebert offered him immunity for his testimony. “I have nothing to say,” he responded.

JR, now 17, had some difficulty remembering the events surrounding Prince’s death, and he avoided eye contact with his father throughout his time on the stand. But he recalled going with his father to pick up Prince, who lived with his mother in Maryland, and playing with him once they returned home to Manassas City for a seven-hour visitation.

JR testified that after lunch his father placed the toddler in a crib in the teenager’s room, but poked his head in a couple of times to check on Prince. The teen had a headset on, covering one ear, and said he would have been able to hear any cries from the toddler.

“He barged into the room and picked up Prince and started saying his name,” the teen recalled of his father. “He was acting like Prince was dying.”

JR said he followed his father and Prince to the bathroom, where he saw his father taking the boy’s clothes off and splashing water on Prince’s chest and stomach, with Prince’s feet closest to the faucet.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Prosecutors in Rams murder trial build case that 15-month-old boy was drowned

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/15/prosecutors-in-rams-murder-trial-build-case-that-15-month-old-boy-was-drowned/?utm_term=.d4a57f6b3e4d

Prosecutors in Prince William County, Va., began building their case Wednesday that 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams was killed by drowning in October 2012, and not by a complex febrile seizure as the lawyers for his father have contended. Constance DiAngelo, the assistant medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the toddler, was adamant that all indicators in Prince’s body pointed to drowning, even though the chief medical examiner of Virginia later overruled her and declared the cause of death “undetermined.”

Also Wednesday, the second jailhouse informant summoned to testify against Joaquin S. Rams said that Rams confessed in the Prince William jail that he had killed his son for the insurance money from policies taken out on the toddler. But the informant, Jamal Thompson, had key details of the boy’s death wrong, acknowledged he was sent to a mental hospital after rampant misconduct in the jail and that he sent an incriminating letter about Rams while still facing felony charges.

At the hospital, Prince’s temperature was measured at 91.2. DiAngelo said she was aware that Prince had had some febrile seizures, which involve a spiking temperature and often little more. She felt his low temperature at the hospital was not consistent with a febrile seizure, though it was taken more than 20 minutes after he reportedly collapsed. She knew that the paramedics said Prince felt cold within minutes of his collapse, though she said they did not take his temperature.

In her autopsy, DiAngelo said she “found thin fluid in the sinuses of the child. I also found thin fluid in the small intestines and part of the large intestine. There was abundant fluid in the airways and lungs.” She told Ebert that was consistent with drowning. She also said Prince’s brain was discolored and soft, which “meant that the child went without oxygen for some time.”

Ebert asked how long it would take to drown a child. “It can take seconds,” DiAngelo said, “depending on how quickly water was entering the airways,” though she later acknowledged that she testified at the preliminary hearing in the case that “it could be as short as a couple of minutes.” Ebert concluded, “Did you find any sign this child died of natural causes?” DiAngelo answered, “I did not.”

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 3: Rams was in deep financial hole when heavily insured son suddenly died

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/16/rams-trial-day-3-rams-was-in-deep-financial-hole-when-heavily-insured-son-suddenly-died/?utm_term=.cec16217460b

In the summer of 2012, Joaquin Rams seemed to be in a deep financial hole. He stopped making payments on the $500,000 mortgage for his house in Bristow, Va., he stopped repaying a $50,000 line of credit on that house, and he owed a private school more than $11,000 for his teenaged son’s tuition.

But in 2011, Prince William County, Va., prosecutors believe, Rams had created a financial escape plan. He purchased three life insurance policies on his then-newborn son, Prince McLeod Rams, totaling $524,000. And in October 2012, according to a medical examiner who did the autopsy, Rams drowned his 15-month-old son. Prosecutors on Thursday rested their case for capital murder against Rams after having a series of financial representatives testify to Rams’s debts and insurance investments, and after the medical examiner and two doctors said that febrile seizures were an unheard of cause of death for a toddler.

A string of financial-related witnesses wrapped up the prosecution’s case in chief Thursday, though more witnesses could come in their rebuttal case. Jerel Robertson, a claims manager at Met Life, noted that Rams cashed in a $162,439 death benefit in February 2009, after the November 2008 death of his mother, Alma Collins, in Bristow. The medical examiner and Prince William police ruled the death a suicide by asphyxiation, but prosecutors have more recently asserted that they believe Rams killed her. Robertson said Rams gradually drew down the death benefit, using some money to pay his mortgage, until it was gone in August 2011.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 4: Housemate says Rams was splashing, not drowning, toddler

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/20/rams-trial-day-4-housemate-says-rams-was-splashing-not-drowning-toddler/?utm_term=.452fabc788a8

Roger Jestice said he was watching television in his recliner on a Saturday afternoon in October 2012 when he heard an urgent yell: “Rog, call 911!” Jestice said he immediately got up, grabbed a cordless phone and ran up the stairs while dialing 911.

“I have a young child that has had seizures in the past,” Jestice told the 911 calltaker, according to a tape played in court Monday. “He’s in the middle of another seizure.” His call was switched from Prince William County, Va., dispatchers to Manassas City, Va., where Jestice lives. As he waited for another calltaker, Jestice said he arrived in the bathroom to see Joaquin S. Rams cradling his 15-month-old son Prince in his arms, splashing water on his chest and legs in the bathtub.

In the background, Joaquin Rams can be heard to yell, “He’s shaking and he’s not breathing.” Jestice speaks again to the calltaker, “The shaking seems to have stopped.” Joaquin Rams shouts, “Prince!” And Jestice adds, “He doesn’t seem to be responsive.”

Paramedics arrived in minutes, but Prince McLeod Rams still wasn’t breathing, and wasn’t revived for another half-hour. He died the next day, and after the medical examiner ruled that he was drowned, Joaquin Rams was charged with murder. The defense opened their case Monday on the fourth day of trial at the Prince William courthouse in Manassas, and Jestice’s testimony was crucial: He is the second person to testify that he did not see Rams drowning his son. It is not known if Rams will testify, but he has previously proclaimed his innocence, and noted that Prince had suffered from a series of febrile seizures in the weeks prior to his collapse.

But Willett noted that Jestice was already telling the calltaker that Prince was having a seizure. “Makes me wonder how you knew to tell 911 that the baby was seizing,” Willett said. Jestice replied, “I basically was telling them the baby had seizures in the past, that’s what I was informing them.”

“When you said the baby was seizing,” Willett continued, “you meant the baby was seizing at that time?”

“I believe so,” Jestice said.

“But you didn’t know that first-hand?”

“No sir,” Jestice answered.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 5: Rams was considering bankruptcy two months before insured son died

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/21/rams-trial-day-5-rams-was-considering-bankruptcy-two-months-before-insured-son-died/?utm_term=.6b650296916e

A second housemate of Joaquin S. Rams testified tearfully Tuesday about the events of October 2012 when Rams’s toddler son fell unconscious in Manassas City, Va., and later died, but she also revealed that Rams was considering filing for bankruptcy and had contacted a bankruptcy attorney two months prior to the boy’s passing.

The revelation by Sue Jestice was significant because prosecutors believe Rams was deeply in debt and drowned his son, 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams, in order to collect $524,000 in life insurance policies he’d taken out on the boy in 2011.

Asked about Oct. 20, 2012, Sue Jestice said the boy seemed happy and normal, playing hide-and-seek with his older brother. She said she and her husband went to their downstairs residence in the house. Then, she said she heard “the most heart-wrenching scream, similar to the one on September 8. ‘Roger call 911!’ Roger ran up the stairs.”

Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney James Willett asked Sue Jestice about Rams’s financial situation, and the fact that his “financial distress” caused him to rent out his own home and move in with the Jestices in 2011. She said by August 2012, his tenants had moved out and he was concerned the house in Bristow, Va., would enter foreclosure. She acknowledged his was contemplating filing for bankruptcy.

This disclosure intrigued the judge, who asked Jestice a series of follow-up questions over the objections of defense attorney Chris Leibig. “He was going to try everything he could to keep the house,” Sue Jestice told Bellows. The judge asked about the possibility of bankruptcy, and Jestice said “he’d been in contact with an attorney” who specialized in bankruptcy.

Bellows asked if Rams’s financial status was improving by October 2012 and Jestice said no. The judge then pulled up an exchange of text messages Rams sent to a real estate agent that month which said he was considering moving back into the house because “things are finally looking up.” Jestice said she hadn’t heard that.

The defense also called digital forensic expert Larry Daniel to the stand, who examined Rams’s computer hard drives, and also reviewed a study of the drives done for the prosecution by the Secret Service. He said he did not find any indication of online searches done related to drowning or seizures or cashing in insurance money.

The defense has experts lined up who have said that such seizures can be fatal, court records show, but scheduling them to testify in Prince William County, Va., has slowed the trial to a crawl. Only two defense witnesses took the stand Tuesday, only one is scheduled for Wednesday and none are available Thursday, defense lawyers told Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows. The defense team said it will have four days of witnesses next week, and then the prosecution will present its rebuttal evidence the following week.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 6: Judge questions witness in detail on deceased boy’s febrile seizures

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/22/rams-trial-day-6-judge-questions-witness-at-length-on-deceased-boys-febrile-seizures/?utm_term=.391021995b36

As the lawyers for Joaquin Rams began to build their case Wednesday that his toddler son suffered a fatal seizure, and wasn’t drowned by his father, a pediatric neurologist testified that febrile seizures could be fatal but admitted he’d never had a patient who died of one.

Then the judge in the murder trial took over.

Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows displayed his deep knowledge of the case, and his experience as a prosecutor and public defender, citing events and documents that haven’t even been discussed in Rams’s murder trial yet. He quizzed the expert witness for more than a half-hour, finally drilling down to one of the most vital questions of the case: Could 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams have had a fever that caused his father to exclaim “he’s really hot!” in the background of the 911 tape reporting the boy’s collapse, and then be cold to the touch when paramedics arrived five minutes later?

“That’s exactly right,” said Joseph Scheller, a former pediatric neurologist at Children’s Hospital in Washington now in private practice. “When the body feels something drastic is going on, it shunts blood away from the hands and feet to the main organs. so that may have been going on as well…To me, the fact that Prince feels cold to the touch means there has been a really significant brain injury.”

Bellows asked, “How far back would the brain injury have to occur” to cause a drastic temperature drop?

“If the child’s not breathing,” Scheller said, “it could take only a few minutes.”

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 7: How does a toddler’s temperature drop to 91.2 degrees?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/27/rams-trial-day-7-how-does-a-toddlers-temperature-drop-to-91-2-degrees/?utm_term=.88c576b8db3b

One of the key factors for doctors considering the death of 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams was his low body temperature after he arrived at Prince William Medical Center in October 2012: 91.2 degrees, more than seven degrees below normal and nine degrees below what is considered a fever for a child, 100.4 degrees. It convinced the first pathologist who examined Prince to disregard the father’s claim that the boy had a fever and declare that Prince had been drowned. The father was then arrested and charged with murder.

But more than a year after that finding, the chief medical examiner of Virginia, William Gormley, changed the official cause of Prince’s death from “drowning” to “undetermined.” Gormley took the witness stand in the seventh day of the murder trial of Joaquin S. Rams in Manassas, Va., to explain why he made that momentous change, though he still doesn’t understand how the boy’s temperature plummeted so far so fast.

“After I reviewed the case,” Gormley said, “and found several things about the diagnosis of drowning that disturbed me, and consulted with other pathologists in the central office, and consulted with Dr. DiAngelo, I ultimately decided to change” the cause of death. He also discussed the case with Tracey Corey, chief medical examiner of Kentucky, who had reviewed the case for prosecutors and had come to the same conclusion. She is now listed as a witness for Rams.

Then came the discussion of the odd cooling of Prince’s body. “It’s hard to understand,” Gormley said. He said a dead adult body typically cools 1.5 degrees per hour. A child has a larger ratio of skin surface to body mass, “so they would cool much more rapidly.” Still, Gormley said, “even starting at 98 degrees, that’s seven degrees difference in just a few hours.”

Under questioning from Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows, who is trying the case without a jury, Gormley acknowledged that if a child had no heart rate, no clothes on and was splashed in cold water, that could bring the temperature down faster. Bellows asked Gormley whether he could say, “with any degree of medical certainty,” how long it would take for a child’s temperature to drop from 98.6 to 91.2 under Prince’s circumstances. “No sir,” Gormley replied. “It’s most unusual to cool that much that fast.”

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 8: Expert says toddler autopsy was incomplete, drowning unlikely

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/28/rams-trial-day-8-expert-says-toddler-autopsy-was-incomplete-drowning-unlikely/?utm_term=.3c83d9bd377a

As the defense team for Joaquin Rams tried Tuesday to build a case that Rams did not murder his 15-month-old son by drowning, it summoned a pediatric forensic pathologist, Janice Ophoven of Woodbury, Minn., who said she was one of a few doctors who focus on autopsies and causes of death in children. Ophoven expressed her opinion that the autopsy done on Prince McLeod Rams in 2012 was incomplete, that there were few signs of drowning and that she would have ruled the cause of death “undetermined” without further testing on the toddler’s brain, heart and metabolism.

One of the findings DiAngelo relied upon in determining that Prince had drowned was that he had fluid in his lungs, sinuses and intestines. Ophoven said that after people have cardiac arrest, followed by lack of oxygen to the brain, blood vessels and capillaries leak and fluid is rampant through the body. She said keeping Prince on a ventilator for more than a day along with intravenous fluids would have further built up his internal fluid. “The leakage occurs everywhere” internally Ophoven said. “In a matter of a few hours, the body weight can add 5 to 6 kilos. You pour the fluid in and they become like sponges.”

Ophoven also said she had investigated numerous drownings during her time as a medical examiner in Minnesota, and Prince’s circumstances were not consistent with drowning, though she couldn’t completely rule it out. She noted that paramedics found his airway was clear when they arrived and that they had no trouble intubating him. “In a drowning there’s going to be volumes of water that’s filled up the airway,” she said. Once the victim is revived, restoring oxygen is often a problem for someone who had water in their lungs, but she said Prince was oxygenated easily after he was revived.

Ophoven also noted that paramedics observed dried blood on Prince’s nose and there was fresh blood in the boy’s crib, which she said were indications of a seizure. “What I see is a body subjected to hypoxia and cardiac arrest,” Ophoven said. “But I have no evidence that it is foul play.”

Under cross-examination, Ophoven acknowledged that a man such as Rams could suffocate Prince without causing visible injuries, and that she could not definitively rule out drowning as a cause of death. Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows, who is trying the case without a jury, asked why. “There are rare circumstances,” Ophoven said, “of what we call dry drowning. People choke, the airway isn’t open, fluid doesn’t go down. A laryngeal spasm.” But she added, “If you were to present this case to me, unless you were to present me a circumstance of the child being pulled out of the bathtub, I wouldn’t have considered drowning.”

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 9: Judge cross-examines defense witness, pokes hole in claim toddler had seizure

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/29/rams-trial-day-9-judge-cross-examines-defense-witness-pokes-hole-in-claim-toddler-had-seizure/?utm_term=.c2f20b2ab77b

The unusual circumstance of a judge also serving as the jury enabled the judge in the Joaquin Rams murder trial to again cross-examine a defense witness for more than a half-hour Wednesday, eventually poking a crucial hole in Rams’s claim that his 15-month-old son suffered a fatal seizure rather than being drowned, while the defense team sat in silent distress.

Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows seems to be exploring an alternate theory of the case: that Rams suffocated the boy, placed him in a crib next to his teenage son, then rushed in and claimed he splashed water on Prince because he was “really hot,” according to the 911 tape. Bellows has focused on the fact that when paramedics arrived, they found Prince cold to the touch and with no heartbeat. The boy’s heartbeat was not restored for more than a half-hour, and after more than a day on life support, he died.

Bellows asked if someone in cardiac arrest would be moving. “A patient in cardiac arrest would have no movements,” Bridges said.

Bellows then returned to the 911 call placed by Rams’s housemate, Roger Jestice, with Rams shouting in the background. “Rams says, ‘He’s shaking, but he’s not breathing,’ ” Bellows recounted, of a tape he said he had listened to 20 times. “If he [Prince] is shaking then, is that consistent with him being in cardiac arrest in the crib a period of time earlier?”

“No,” Bridges said.

Bellows returned to the paramedics’ observation that Prince was cold to the touch when they arrived. “If the child’s heart had stopped beating,” Bellows asked, “how quickly could he have gone cold to the touch, and had a febrile seizure?” Bridges said he didn’t know but noted that of the children he sees in the emergency room, “the vast majority of patients are cold. I don’t know how quickly a child drops to that temperature.” Prince’s temperature was taken at Prince William Medical Center about 20 minutes after he collapsed, and was 91.2. Bridges had testified earlier that he did not think that was unusual because small children cool off very quickly, particularly when their heart and brain are not regulating their body temperature.

“If a pillow were put over a child’s face,” Bellows asked Bridges, “with no signs of struggle … would it have to be kept on for the full 10 minutes, or is there a point where the child no longer has the capacity to breathe on its own? … How long before an individual of Prince’s size and weight would lose consciousness?” Bridges said his best guess would be five to six minutes, but that breathing would then possibly resume.

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

Rams trial Day 10: Rams doesn’t testify; defense pushes back on judge questions, then rests

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/03/30/rams-trial-day-10-rams-doesnt-testify-defense-pushes-back-on-judge-questions-then-rests/?utm_term=.ead94b449f6b

Joaquin Rams, accused of murder in the 2012 death of his 15-month-old son in Manassas, Va., declined to testify in his own behalf Thursday, and the defense rested its case after presenting an expert who said she didn’t think the boy drowned. The defense also presented bank records that showed Rams had more than $277,000 in his bank account in the three years before his arrest, as a response to the prosecution’s argument that Rams was so destitute he killed his son for a $524,000 insurance payout.

Also Thursday, defense lawyers pushed back against Circuit Court Judge Randy I. Bellows’s claim Wednesday that Rams could be heard on the 911 tape saying that his son, Prince McLeod Rams, “is shaking.” That led the judge, as part of a 30-minute inquiry from the bench, to ask a defense expert if someone in full cardiac arrest could be shaking. The expert said no, leaving the impression that Prince could not have had a seizure shortly before his death, as Rams and the defense have argued for four years.

Bellows came down from the bench and put his ear close to a small speaker, listening as part of the conversation between Rams’s housemate Roger Jestice and a Prince William emergency call-taker was played. After the tape was played twice, the judge said, “It’s not clear to me whether he says he’s shaking or he was shaking.” He said he would listen to it again, although he previously said he had listened to it 20 times. Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said he heard it as “he’s shaking.”

In January 2013, when he was the focus of the investigation into Prince’s death and the subject of editorials in The Washington Post, Rams launched a blog to declare his innocence. He said his mother committed suicide because she had Alzheimer’s disease, and that he had no involvement in Mason’s death. “The truth will come out,” Rams wrote, “and I will be found as innocent of these allegations concerning my son Prince as I am of any of the other outrageous things I have been accused of and found innocent of in the past.”

But he declined to speak for the record Thursday. Lead defense attorney Chris Leibig declined to comment on the decision, which may have been complicated by the fact that if Rams took the stand, he would be cross-examined not only by Willett, a highly experienced prosecutor, but also by the judge, who spent 19 years as a federal prosecutor, three as a public defender, and actively questioned a number of witnesses in this case.

The trial takes a break for the annual conference of Virginia commonwealth’s attorneys in Richmond, where Willett is a speaker. It resumes Wednesday with the prosecution’s rebuttal case, expected to include the two experts who agreed with DiAngelo, including child seizure expert Shlomo Shinnar, and Prince’s mother, Hera McLeod, who has advocated vigorously for the prosecution of her former fiance. She was excluded from the courtroom during the defense case.

Closing arguments are scheduled for next Thursday, and Bellows said he would issue his verdict a week later, on April 13.

 

[Jewels53]

JusticeWillbeServed, I have been reading along and wanted to thank you for the updates. I will be curious as to what the Judge will decide. He seems to have asked a lot of good questions that I have read.

It seems that Rams has done some lying but it is hard to tell just from reading articles. I am not really sure what the truth is, bur from the reading I have done I am leaning toward a Guilty Verdict.

Thanks again for the updates!

 

[JusticeWillBeServed]

JusticeWillbeServed, I have been reading along and wanted to thank you for the updates. I will be curious as to what the Judge will decide. He seems to have asked a lot of good questions that I have read.

It seems that Rams has done some lying but it is hard to tell just from reading articles. I am not really sure what the truth is, bur from the reading I have done I am leaning toward a Guilty Verdict.

Thanks again for the updates!

It's hard to tell what happened and none of the experts testifying can safely conclude the exact cause of death for Prince Rams.

The life insurance payouts suggests to me that something more sinister occurred that day. Can they prove this beyond a reasonable doubt? Not sure but the prosecutors sure are doing a great job and so is the judge.