A 32-year-old man was acquitted Friday of the shooting deaths of a 17-year-old girl and her 16-year-old brother more than a decade ago.
Jurors deliberated about two weeks before returning their verdict in the fourth trial of Frank Williams for the Jan. 31, 2004, killings of Shulma and Jason Ramos in the shooting in the 3100 block of West Adams Boulevard in South Los Angeles.
Williams had been convicted twice of the killings — first in September 2008 and then in April 2012 — but each of those convictions was overturned by a state appeals court panel.
In November 2010, a state appellate court panel overturned his first conviction by finding that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor erred in admitting evidence discovered late in the first trial that a defense alibi witness was arrested in possession of one of two guns that was used in the killings.
In September 2014, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned Williams’ second conviction.
“Defendant contends reversal is required because a gang expert spontaneously interjected into his testimony an assertion that defendant had participated in, and gotten away with, an unrelated violent bank robbery in which an accomplice was killed,” the panel found in the September 2014 ruling.
“We agree because the testimony was extremely inflammatory, the evidence in the case was very closely balanced, and the court’s subsequent direction to disregard the evidence was insufficient to cure the resulting prejudice.”
However, the appellate court justices rejected the defense’s contention that there was insufficient evidence to support a finding of premeditation, which would have barred Williams from being retried on first-degree murder charges.
The first jury to hear the case against Williams in March 2007 announced it was hopelessly deadlocked. That jury convicted another man, Leon McDonald Brown, of first-degree murder for the killings of the teen siblings, who were with a group of friends looking for a party when they were confronted.
The teens retreated to their car, and shots were fired at the vehicle containing the brother and sister, who were shot in the head and back, respectively, and two of their friends were injured.
Brown was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His conviction was upheld on appeal and the California Supreme Court refused to review the case.
–City News Service