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RICHARD RAEKENathan Joe Ramirez is convicted a second time. His lawyers will try to save him from a death sentence.
NEW PORT RICHEY - Nathan Joe Ramirez bragged to other inmates that a technicality would let him get away with the murder of Mildred Boroski. He had avoided the death penalty once before, in 1999, when the Florida Supreme Court threw out his confession.
But after his case spent more than eight years working through the courts, a jury took 22 minutes to find Ramirez guilty of felony murder Thursday.
He showed no reaction to the verdict.
Ramirez and his accomplice, Johnathan Grimshaw broke into Boroski's home the night of March 10, 1995, killed her dog with a crowbar, raped her and looted her home. Then they drove Boroski to a nearby field and shot her twice in the head with a Colt .38-caliber revolver that belonged to her late husband.
Today, Ramirez's attorneys will try to save their client from the death penalty. In 1996 Grimshaw received a death sentencefor his part in the crime. However, a judge determined that Grimshaw's jury received incorrect sentencing instructions and sent the case to another jury. It recommended life without parole.
In order to save Ramirez's life, his attorneys might introduce Grimshaw's sentence during the trial's penalty phase today. If so, Assistant State Attorney Michael Halkitis said he will argue that Ramirez is more culpable. Ramirez told other inmates that he shot 71-year-old Boroski execution style. Grimshaw never made those statements, Halkitis said.
During the trial, Ryan Keene, a former inmate, testified for the defense that Ramirez told him that he had only burglarized the home and had not taken part in the murder. That conflicted with earlier statements he gave to investigators and Halkitis.
Halkitis seized on the opportunity to cast doubt on Keene's testimony. Under a withering cross examination, Keene admitted that he lied in his deposition about Ramirez taking part in the murder.
"I told them whatever I could to get them to leave me alone. I wanted nothing to do with this case," he said.
Halkitis replied, "Would it be fair to say in this case, Mr. Keene, that you decide what is truthful and what is not truthful?"
Without strong witnesses, defense attorney Jack Bridges tried to poke holes in the prosecution's case during the closing arguments.
"Why is there not one single, solitary drop of physical evidence?" Bridges asked the jury.
He also called into question the veracity of the five jailhouse informers who told the jury that Ramirez had confessed to the crime while at the Pasco County jail. Bridges tried to pin the murder entirely on Grimshaw, arguing that Ramirez unknowingly held a gun and two rings stolen from Boroski as a favor to his friend.
"Why does it make Nathan Ramirez a murderer if he was in possession of the murder weapon?" he asked the jury.
But those arguments fell short for the jury.
Halkitis said that criminals don't always leave behind physical evidence. Ramirez and Grimshaw could have raped Boroski with an object. That would explain the lack of blood or semen as well as the metallic powder found in her body by the medical examiner.
As for credibility of the jailhouse informants, Halkitis said, "There's an old saying, you don't find swans in the sewer. And you don't find swans in the Pasco County Detention Center."
If Ramirez had just stood by as Grimshaw raped and murdered Boroski, he would still be guilty of felony murder. The defendant only has to be present if a murder occurs during the commission of a felony, in this case, burglary.
Quoting Jack London's Call of the Wild, Halkitis said, "If you run with the pack you share in the kill."