True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Part VII

Murder of Sherri Rasmussen Part II

Pretrial defense motions

In October, Overland moved to have the entire case dismissed because the initial investigators should have identified Lazarus as a suspect but failed to do so. In support, he cited missing aspects of the original file such as recordings of interviews, Sherri Rasmussen's blood toxicology report, as well as a polygraph test Ruetten allegedly failed. The motion noted Nels Rasmussen's belief that Lazarus was a suspect at the time of the murder, and his ensuing efforts to get the LAPD to take that theory seriously. Because of this failure, he argued, Lazarus's due process rights had been adversely affected since the quality of evidence had degraded in the intervening 23 years.

Overland argued that the truth-in-evidence provisions of the California Constitution required that the long delay in bringing charges adversely affected the quality of the evidence which might otherwise have allowed him to make a better case that there were other suspects, or that the evidence against Lazarus was not as solid as the prosecution claimed, should be considered sufficiently negligent on the state's part to justify dismissing the case. For example, a witness who could have corroborated the prosecution's account of the confrontation between Rasmussen and Lazarus at the hospital had died in 2000. Prosecutors argued in response that Perry was required to apply federal standards, under which such a delay could only be considered prejudicial if it was shown to have been intentional. Perry agreed, and let the case proceed.

Following that denial, Overland moved to quash the search warrants that had been executed on Lazarus's home, vehicle, and spaces she used at work, and suppress the evidence obtained from them. They were, he argued, based on stale information and did not sufficiently establish a nexus between the places searched and the likelihood of finding evidence there; Lazarus had not moved to her present residence, he observed, until 1994, eight years after the murder, and the affidavit in support of the warrant did not provide any reason why evidence might be found there. At times the affidavit, Overland claimed, was deceptive, with the submitting detective asserting that the murder weapon might be found there when Nuttall and Barba had already theorized that Lazarus had reported it stolen two weeks after the murder and irretrievably disposed of it.

Perry admitted he was "uncomfortable" admitting some of the seized evidence, in particular from Lazarus's personal computers and other electronic storage devices at her home since either she had not had them or they had not existed at the time of Rasmussen's death, but he felt that since an experienced judge had issued the search warrants, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied and all the evidence obtained could be admitted. Overland's subsequent motion for a Franks hearing, which would have allowed them to cross-examine the detective who had filed the search-warrant affidavit to determine better whether the evidence obtained was admissible, was also denied on the same basis.

Overland's next motion, heard late in 2010, sought to bar the use of statements Lazarus made during her videotaped interrogation at Parker Center. He argued that, per the Garrity warning usually given to government employees under investigation, California law compelled her to answer questions as a police officer or face disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation, entitling her to automatic use immunity for those answers. The prosecution argued that that only applied where there was an active administrative proceeding, which had not started against Lazarus until after her arrest. Perry agreed with them on the point that Overland's argument was overbroad.

A year later, Perry denied the last of Overland's significant pretrial motions. The criminalists had used MiniFiler, a new product to type Lazarus's DNA. Overland argued that it was sufficiently different from previous technology that she was entitled to a Frye hearing, to determine whether its results were of sufficient scientific validity to be admissible. Perry ruled that it was just another form of the PCR method commonly used to test DNA samples.