In 1998, our sophmore year of high school, a kid I had known since preschool brutally murdered another kid in our class.
They didn’t just kill him, they decapitated him, beat him with a baseball bat until most of the skin was removed from his body, ran over his body with a car. In a town of a few thousand people, where everybody knows everybody else since infancy, this was a majorly traumatizing event. Supposedly, there were a lot of other kids involved, and no one ever came up with a plausible motive for the crime.
Two kids were charged with the murder, one was a juvenile tried as an adult due to the unimaginable brutality of the murder, and one was over eighteen at the time. The younger kid took most of the blame and is now in Pelican Bay.
I have never been able to find much information on the facts of the case (as opposed to the “facts” the whole town “knows”), neither the murderers or the victim return a single google hit. The local media were strangely silent at the time, in a small town like that the feelings of the community are more important than sensationalism.
I’d like to learn more about what happened. I was young at the time and don’t remember much about the trial or anything. I know there were more than a few kids in the murderer’s circle of friends who mysteriously disappeared from town, ostensibly to avoid the family’s names from being connected to the case.
Are court transcripts publicly available? Where would I start looking for other information?
I’d be glad to do some electronic newspaper archive searches if you could give me the name of the victim, perp, and town in which it occured. If you would feel more comfortable doing this via email, my address is visible. I might not get to it until Monday evening as I’m on vacation right now. And I may turn up nothing.
Court “transcripts” don’t necessarily even exist. If there was an appeal, the reporter would have prepared a transcript; the party who appeals usually has to ask the reporter to prepare a transcript. Otherwise there might be an audio- or videotape of the proceedings, or the reporters shorthand notes. It depends on the jurisdiction and the type of proceeding.
Here is how I would start:
Take Sam up on his offer and get whatever news reports he can find.
If the case was tried, there’s a good chance there was an appeal. The appellate decision will have a summary of the facts of the case. This will also give you much of the information necessary to find any transcripts that exist. Another way to find case information at the trial level is to chat up the court clerks. They tend to be gossips, IME. The court will also have a way to find cases by defendant’s name. So you can go over to the court and just ask them for help finding a case against x. If you can get the case file, you wil have a gold mine. Get a look at the complaint or indictment. Any verdict or judgment forms will tell you which of the counts resulted in convictions.
If you know any names, you can ask for the report at the police department.
Lots of towns have local historians or historical societies, so you could try that too.
Reference librarians are your friends. Go to the library.
Just from the little bit that you posted here, I can see about 3 of the 10 typical signs of a gaybashing murder:
“overkill”, much more force than necessary to kill; multiple methods of killing, each of them fatal by itself.
unusual (non-gun) weapon, typically beating or strangulation.
“pile-on”, multiple killers attacking a single victim.
Plus the “no plausible motive” and ‘lot of other kids involved, but not prosecuted’ is still fairly common in small-town gay murders.
So I might take a guess on what was actually involved in this murder.
P.S. Most of this info is research from the Center for Homicide Research, http://www.chronline.org/.
Thanks very much for the responses! I’m sorry I didn’t check in sooner, I got very, very ill after I posed the thread and this is the first chance I’ve had to look in. Samclem, I’ll send you an email with the relevant details, and would be deeply appreciative for your help. t-bonham@scc.net your post kind of startled me–when I was home for Christmas, we were talking about the whole thing, and my mom mentioned that there was some speculation about Erik having been gay, and gaybashing being the motive. It was the first time I’d heard the theory, but in retrospect it does kind of make sense. He was a very popular kid, basketball star and the girls all loved him, certainly not a social outcast. When it happened there was the typical, nebulous muttering of it having been “about drugs” which–as a high school student having a much stronger finger on the pulse of the local drug trade than the prom king/basketball star crowd, was absolutely stupid to me… not that I was going to point that out to anyone.
Gfactor–I just recently learned that there have been several appeals, on the basis that he claims his confession was coerced because the cops told him he was likely to get the death penalty, and evidently juveniles aren’t subject to that particular punishment. I think I read the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and he just lost an appeal in some other court.
I called the Sacramento court records department, and they said I could just send them a check and a case number and they’d send me the file, but that if a transcript existed, I wasn’t allowed a copy of the transcript. Their website has a very helpful search feature which spit out a case number and all kinds of other bits of potentially very useful information.
My guess is that you aren’t “allowed” a copy of the transcript, if it’s in the file, because the transcript sort-of belongs to the court reporter. He or she takes down what happens in court every day, and then sells the transcript. If the defendant wants a copy, he has to buy one. If the prosecutor wants a copy, he has to buy one. If the New York Times wants a copy, it has to buy one. You could buy one, too, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You’re better off reading motions (particularly if there’s a motion to quash the confession), because that will give you the excerpts you need from the record for your purposes. Also, consider calling the prosecutor and asking him or her about the trial. Much like court clerks, lawyers generally like to talk about their cases.
Also, since this is in California, here’s a link to the online docket for the Third Appellate District for the California Court of Appeal (I assumed Third District because you said Sacramento; if not, use this page to search for your appellate district). You can search by party name (the defendant, in this case), and see the online docket (the list of documents filed in the action, as well as the names of the attorneys involved) and consider whether you want to call the appellate court to look at their case file. Good luck.
Trial transcripts get pretty expensive. Sometimes, especially when the case has been appealed, you can find a copy of some portion of the transcript in the court file. If you go and look at the file in person, you can find some goodies like that in there and read them for free. It is usually not “ok” to copy them, and in some jurisdictions it says so right on the transcript. But it happens all the time.
The transcription fee is part of the court reporter’s compensation.
When I was in OH, our local prosecutor got into a tiff with the administrative judge over copying transcripts. The defendant would appeal and request a copy of the transcript. The prosecutor would then wait for the transcript to be prepared and then request a copy from the court clerk, at the standard copy cost. The judge ordered him to knock it off. It was a small town, and the dispute was very hostile. I resulted in an Ohio Supreme Court case (pdf). The case is also discussed here
I agree. You’ll have to wade through pages and pages of procedural junk just to get to the interesting stuff.
Hey, thanks for the link! I did find some good stuff here, including the attorney’s name. I think the prosecuter is just listed as the DA, so I imagine I’m not going to have much luck there.
Do I just call the appelate court and say “I’d like a copy of the case file for case number _____”? Or is there a process to it?
With the transcript, the clerk told me there was a review process and a petition had to be submitted to a judge for release of the transcript.
Sorry. I was cleaning it and it went off. I was going to ask whether this might be the petition that the clerk spoke of. If so, this is probably not the route you want to take, even if you do want the transcript. “I just want to see it,” probably isn’t going to do it. http://www.lawskills.com/case/ga/id/52113/ This procedure is the one for indigent defendants to get a transcript at no cost.
You want to order the transcript from the court reporter. If you really *must *see the transcript, find out who the court reporter was for the case and contact them directly. The clerk that you spoke to before should be able to give you the name and contact information, or at least tell you where to look next.
**Campion ** may be able to shed more light on how it works in CA. Some judges usually have the same court reporter for their cases. If that is true, then you can contact the judge’s clerk instead. In other courts, they have a court reporting pool, so you’d have to find a number for that department, or as I said, get the name and number of the court reporter.
Wow. I really did start two sentences in a row with “also.” I need to proof better.
Glad the link worked for you. My email’s in my profile; if you’d like, email me the defendant’s name and I’ll look at the docket and tell you what documents, if any, I’d be interested in seeing if I were you. I suspect all you’ll want is the opening brief on appeal, the respondent’s brief, and any reply brief. There will also be a “record on appeal,” which will include some or all of the reporter’s transcript of the trial. Copying the entire file can get expensive; I don’t recall what the cost is, but it might be twenty cents a page. The three briefs alone, without any of the record, are each probably around 40 pages, so that’s pretty manageable. The reason you would want the briefs is that they will lay out what the defendant was charged with and the evidence in support of that charge. I think that’s what you want to know.
If I were you, I would call the clerk and ask what the process is to obtain the appellate file. The clerks at the appellate courts in California, in my opinion, are some of the nicest people in the world. I suspect that if you explain the situation – you’re interested in the case, would like to see the file, how can you do that? – they’ll help you out.
I have practiced very little in Sacramento, so I don’t know if there is a regular court reporter assigned to each courtroom the way there is down here in LA. Moreover, since the murder ocurred in 1998, I would assume the trial took place around 2000, which is five years ago. People move on. But you can call the trial judge’s court clerk and ask. I would recommend calling either in the afternoon or after 10am. If, when you call, the clerk whispers rather than using a regular speaking voice, ask only when you can call back, then hang up. The clerk is whispering because court is in session; you’ll get better cooperation when the clerk is not distracted. Usually, morning session starts at 8:30 and is over by 10, if the court is not in trial, so calling after 10, I have found, is a better time to reach the clerk.
Once you have the clerk on the line, tell him or her that you are trying to find the court reporter who worked in that courtroom in the appropriate time frame.
I’ll reiterate, though, that calling the DA’s office isn’t a bad idea. If you can find the prosecutor and he or she is in a chatty mood, you may find out some interesting information.
Sent!
Thanks for the help, I have a minor phobia of new phone situations, and since the legal world is completely foreign to me, it’s very, very helpful for me to know what I’m asking for, so I don’t look like too much of a stammering idiot when I call .
Good point. Although, IME, court reporters tend to stick around in trial court jobs. I’ve tracked down a lot of transcripts and not had many problems finding the court reporter (one had died, I seem to recall). Again though, I think **Campion **and I agree that you are barking up the wrong tree looking for a transcript.
Perfect. It still amazes me that they even answer the phone while court is in session.
Mixie: fair warning. I’m about to send you several documents, so check your email. In short, I’ve found the briefs from R’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit (habeas corpus) and I think they may answer some of your questions. I only skimmed the briefs, but it doesn’t appear he’s ever given a clear answer as to why he killed E. t-bonham@scc.net’s theory may hold water.
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