If you’re like me, you first heard of this story last week, as the tragic tale of a mother of four being ruthlessly gunned down after a road rage run-in with a suspect still at large. Tammy Meyers had been teaching her teenage daughter how to drive just minutes from their home when she was shot and killed as a result of road rage. (Enter sad violins…) A reward was offered by the family of the deceased, and her children were giving statements to the media about what a good mom she was. What a sad story.

This week, however, the whole truth (or at least more of it) has come out. After leaving the school parking lot with her daughter around 11 p.m. at night (an odd time for a driving lesson), Tammy Meyers was cut off by the alleged shooter. She then drove home, dropped off her teenage daughter, and picked up her 22-year-old son and his gun. The two set out to find the traffic terrorist, driving around the neighborhood in search of him. They found him and began to follow his car for a while, before supposedly turning around to go back home. According to police, the subject then followed them home and was the first shooter in the exchange between the driver and Tammy’s son that ultimately resulted in Tammy’s death.

So to recap, this wasn’t just a heart-wrenching tragedy where an innocent mother was ruthlessly gunned down – this woman went out of her way to hunt down the offensive driver, bringing her ARMED TEENAGE SON with her! For what, back-up? What was she planning to do when the two set off, weapon in hand?! And way to put your young son in danger!

Smells bad. Totally stinks, in fact.



Today, after a stand-off with Vegas Police (along with the husband of the deceased and every media outlet in town), 19-year-old Erich Nowsch was taken into custody as the alleged suspect in the shooting.

Meanwhile it has been reported that the Meyers family knew Erich from around the neighborhood and they are already on a smear campaign to paint Erich as being a bad guy. According to NBC News, Tammy’s husband Robert Meyers said of Erich, “he knew where I live. We knew how bad he was but we didn’t know he was this bad.” (Huh? He knew how bad but he didn’t know he was this bad? I’m confused…) Mr. Meyers went on to say that his wife Tammy had “spent countless hours at that park consoling this boy," that she gave him food and money, and told him to “pull his pants up and to be a man, more times than I can count.” (More sad violins…) So the shooter is a sinner and the victim is a saint – even though SHE was the one who pursued HIM in quite the calculated manner.

I’m not saying it’s okay to go around shooting people, but it seems to me like there’s blame to share between both the victim and shooter. I guess only time will tell how the story plays out, but I am personally on Team Erich – at least for now. Stay tuned for updates!

Last night around 6:15 p.m. PST, the Ferguson prosecutor Mr. Robert McCulloch, made an incredibly drawn out announcement to the world that police officer Darren Wilson would not be charged after shooting and killing unarmed teenager, Michael Brown. The grand jury took just over 3 months to come to the conclusion that not only was there not enough evidence to put Officer Wilson on trial for first degree murder, but there was not even enough to try him for involuntary manslaughter, essentially exonerating Wilson for the killing.

Not surprisingly, the announcement sparked a huge uproar, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, where protestors hit the pavement to express great upset in the grand jury’s decision. According to the LA Times, 61 people were arrested in Ferguson last night, and at least a dozen buildings were set on fire during the protests.


No. The United States Justice Department is conducting its own federal investigation into this incident and is also investigating the practices of the Ferguson Police Department as a whole. And thank goodness for that.

A Couple of Interesting Facts You Might Not Know

1. The prosecutor in this case, Robert McCulloch, was accused of bias and asked to step down from his handling of the matter due to his own personal experience: his father was a police officer who was shot to death while in pursuit of a suspect. (Sound familiar?)

2. Officer Wilson has stayed out of the public eye during the grand jury deliberations, but his life was not put on hold by any means – in fact, he got married at the end of last month. Nice to see he isn’t letting the death of an unarmed teenager get in the way of his nuptials.


From what the prosecutor said, Michael Brown had turned around and began to run towards Officer Wilson when Wilson fatally shot him “several times.” Brown was unarmed; Wilson was a trained police officer. So my question is, shouldn’t a police officer have some skill or tool OTHER to fatally shoot an unarmed young person who comes toward him? Why not use his Taser? Or a police baton? Or his own police-trained fists. It is my belief that cops should be trained on how to deal with people in ways that do not involve shooting them and if Officer Wilson had been properly trained, he should have been able to quell any threat presented by Michael Brown without killing him in his tracks.

If Brown had pulled a gun on Officer Wilson, then absolutely, shoot to kill. Or if there had been 10 Michael Browns surrounding Officer Wilson, then okay, probably a good idea to pull your gun. Or, if it was ME who Michael Brown was aggressively approaching in a secluded alleyway, then fine, I would probably feel scared and threatened enough to pull a firearm. But an officer of the law should know better – he should know how to deal with an UNARMED person without using his damn gun.

Today in court, counsel for Alix Tichelman claims she had no motive to kill Forrest Hayes, the victim in her pending manslaughter case out of Santa Cruz. Hayes was an executive at Google and also worked for several other tech companies. Public defender Larry Bigham told the judge that Hayes had been a steady source of income for the defendant, who would thus have no reason to want him dead. He was trying to get Tichelman released on her own recognizance or at least get a reduction in her $1.5 million bail; both requests were denied.

Security video from the time of Hayes’ death apparently shows the lady of the night preparing a syringe of heroin and injecting it into Hayes, who collapsed after a severe reaction to the drug. According to the police, instead of calling 911, Tichelman packed up her drugs while sipping a glass of red wine, and promptly got the hell out of dodge. She is now facing a manslaughter charge (among others), the prosecution alleging that administering heroin was “part of her routine.”

The scenario was all too familiar for Tichelman. In September 2013, she came out of the bathroom to find her “boyfriend,” 53-year-old Dean Riopelle, unconscious from a heroin overdose. She claims that she spent 5 minutes trying to revive him and only then called 911. Riopelle was eventually transported to the hospital but was taken off life support one week later.

So, can evidence of the prior case be used against Alix Tichelman in this new case? The answer is: maybe.

California Evidence Code section 1101(b) provides the following: "Nothing in this section prohibits the admission of evidence that a person committed a crime, civil wrong, or other act when relevant to prove some fact (such as motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake or accident, or whether a defendant in a prosecution for an unlawful sexual act or attempted unlawful sexual act did not reasonably and in good faith believe that the victim consented) other than his or her disposition to commit such an act."

In layman’s terms, this section allows evidence of “prior bad acts” to prove anything BUT the accused having a propensity towards a particular act or behavior. This type of character evidence can, however, be used to prove things such as intent, knowledge, familiarity, etc… So basically, the prosecution only needs to frame its relevance in terms other than to show likelihood of defendant having committed the crime at hand, and the incident is admissible character evidence.

There have been many cases that define the parameters of this type of character evidence, far beyond this blog’s capacity. For more, see: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1982&context=plr

Last Friday, Franc Cano, 27, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, were arrested in Anaheim.  On Monday, they were both charged with four counts of special circumstances murder and four counts of felony rape.   If they are convicted, they will face a minimum of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and could face the death penalty.  

Background

Both men were previously charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under fourteen and were believed to have met in 2012 when they both cut their ankle bracelets and boarded a grey hound bus to Las Vegas.  They were apprehended two weeks later by federal agents and were returned to CA where they were charged and convicted for failing to register as sex offenders.  After the conviction, both reported monthly and were ordered to wear government issued GPS devises. 

Meanwhile, four women went missing.  Santa Ana Police Chief Carols Rojas reported that the two men “were not on our radar whatsoever.”  He explained that three of the women missing from Santa Ana, went completely off the grid.  They had been searching everywhere when the body of Jarrae Nykkole Estep was found on a conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-sorting plant.  Once authorities realized that Jarrae had been murdered, and that she shared a similar profile with the other three missing women, they shifted the focus of their investigation. 

The ankle bracelets worn by the accused helped police identify Cano and Gordon as suspects and authorities suspect that there are more victims.

What are Special Circumstances Murders?

“Special Circumstances” are sentencing enhancements that can be used to increase a murder sentence and qualify it for the death penalty.   In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia,the United States Supreme Court found that applying the death penalty without any limitations was a violation of the 8^th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  In response, California enacted Penal Code 190.2.  This section sets out the “special circumstances” that qualify a first degree murder conviction for the death penalty.  The list is a bit all over the place because it is comprised of both legislative additions, and voter additions.  Some of the circumstances include; murder of police, murder of a judge, murder’s involving torture, driving by shootings, bombings and more.  In this case, the special circumstances include murder during the commission of rape, multiple murders, and lying in wait.