Kirstin Blaise Lobato is a Nevada woman who was exonerated[1] for the July 2001 murder and mutilation of Duran Bailey, a homeless man from St. Louis who was living in Las Vegas at the time of his death.[2] At her first trial in May 2002, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced from 40 to 100 years in prison.[3][4] In a 2006 retrial, she was convicted of the lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 13 to 45 years. Lobato's case gained significant notoriety due to the publication of new evidence, which some believe points to her innocence of the crime.[5]
On December 29, 2017, Lobato was ordered to be released from the Nevada Department of Corrections.[6] It was reported on Jan 2, 2018, that Lobato would spend another year in prison for an unrelated incident,[7] yet on January 3 the same judge who had ordered Lobato's original release, ordered her released on that matter as well, citing the time Lobato had already served.[8]
Lobato was released from the Clark County Detention Center at about 2 pm on January 3, 2018.[9] After being imprisoned for 11 years and three months since her pre-trial bail was revoked following her convictions on October 6, 2006, Lobato told reporters she wanted to go "shopping" and “get coffee."[9]
Accusations
Beginning in late May 2001, Kirstin Lobato, then 18, began telling numerous friends in Las Vegas and her hometown of Panaca that a large black man tried to rape her at a Budget SuitesHotel on Boulder Highway in east Las Vegas. Lobato was consistent in telling these people that she fended off the attempted sexual assault by using a pocket knife she carried for self-defense, to try to cut her attacker's penis. From late May to July 4, 2001 she told at least nine different people about the Budget Suites attack.[10]
On July 8, 2001, the mutilated corpse of Duran Bailey, a homeless man, was found on the opposite side of Las Vegas. Lobato was charged with the crime more than ten days later, after one of Lobato's friends informed police of her account of the sexual assault that supposedly occurred two months before. During a police interrogation, Lobato acknowledged stabbing a man in the groin, and police believed this constituted a confession to Bailey's murder, while Lobato claimed to be describing her attack.[11]
While prosecutors expected Lobato to plead not guilty by reason of self-defense, Lobato denied committing the crime entirely; she even refused a plea deal offering a 3-year prison sentence on the charge of manslaughter.[12] She insisted that she was at home in Panaca, Nevada, nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Las Vegas, on July 8, 2001, and her family confirmed that.[13] Her attorneys also attempted to discount her supposed confession. However, prosecutors contended that Lobato was a known methamphetamine user and that she killed Bailey during a dispute over sex and drugs. During the May 2002 trial, Lobato testified to her innocence,[14] and her attorneys brought in experts who also stated that Lobato could not have committed the crime based on physical evidence, but Judge Valorie Vega suppressed much of the experts' testimony.[15] In their closing statement, Lobato's attorneys compared her trial to the Salem witch trials.[16] After deliberating through the night, the jury convicted Lobato of first-degree murder. On August 27, 2002, she was sentenced to 40 to 100 years in prison.[4]
Appeals, second trial and ongoing litigation
Over two years after her conviction, on September 3, 2004, Lobato's conviction was reversed; the Supreme Court of Nevada ruled that her attorneys were unable to cross-examine a prosecution witness, who was a woman with whom Lobato was incarcerated while awaiting trial, regarding that witness's motivation for testifying for the government. Her case was remanded for a new trial.[17] On October 6, 2006, she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 13 to 45 years in prison.[5]
Lobato's appeal of her conviction was denied by the Supreme Court of Nevada in October 2009.
In May 2010, Lobato filed a writ of habeas corpus petition that asserted 79 grounds for a new trial. Among those was her claim of actual innocence based on new evidence discovered after her trial proving she was in Panaca, Nevada, during the time when Bailey was killed. Judge Vega denied Lobato's petition in June 2011. Lobato appealed that ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court on August 1, 2011.
In February 2011 Lobato filed a post-conviction petition for DNA testing of crime scene evidence. The Innocence Project agreed to pay for the testing if Lobato's petition were granted. The petition was opposed by the Clark County District Attorney's Office, and denied by Judge Vega. Lobato appealed that ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court, which on January 12, 2012 dismissed her appeal on the basis that Judge Vega's ruling was not appealable under NRS 176.0918.[clarification needed]
After Lobato's DNA testing petition was denied, an online petition called for the Nevada courts to test the crime scene evidence in Lobato's case, claiming it could prove her innocence.[18]
A book about the case, entitled Kirstin Blaise Lobato's Unreasonable Conviction, written by Hans Sherrer, was published in May 2008 by the Justice Institute. A second edition was published in November 2010.[19] As of March 17, 2015 more than 53,000 copies have been downloaded at no charge from the website, Justice Denied.[20]
Retired FBI agent Steve Moore, noted for his advocacy on behalf of Amanda Knox, has referred to the case documents in the Lobato case as, "...complete and utter bullshit."[2] Moore believes that Duran Bailey might have been killed and mutilated sexually by someone else, a woman who had said one week prior that Bailey had raped her.[21]
After having been charged with misconduct and publicly reprimanded by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, Judge Valorie Vega,[22][23] the judge in both of Lobato's trials, did not run for re-election in 2014, stepping down from the bench in January 2015.[23][24]
On September 9, 2014 the Nevada Supreme Court, sitting En banc, heard oral arguments related to Lobato's habeas petition. The case was "Submitted for Decision. En Banc",[25] and the Court's ruling was pending as of April 1, 2015.
On December 19, 2017, Judge Stefany Miley, a District Judge in Las Vegas, granted a new trial for Lobato.[26]
On December 29, 2017 Chief Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ordered Lobato released from the Nevada Department of Corrections.[6] It was reported on Jan 2, 2018, that while in prison, Lobato had been convicted of conspiracy to commit sexual contact with a prisoner and instead of being released, was to be transferred to the Clark County Detention Center to serve an additional year in jail on those charges.[7] On Jan 3, Judge Gonzalez ordered Lobato be released immediately, citing time served.[8]
Lobato was released from the Clark County Detention Center at about 2 pm on January 3, 2018.[9] After being imprisoned for 11 years and three months since her pre-trial bail was revoked following her convictions on October 6, 2006, Lobato told reporters she wanted to go "shopping" and get "coffee."[9]
On December 12, 2024, a civil trial jury found Las Vegas police and two detectives, Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle, now retired, fabricated evidence during their investigation and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon Lobato. The panel determined that Lobato should receive $34 million in compensatory damages from the department and $10,000 in punitive damages from each former detective.[27]
Harry Eugene Claiborne was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada from 1978 until his impeachment and removal in 1986. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Claiborne was only the fifth person in United States history to be removed from office through impeachment by the United States Congress and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936.
Margaret Rudin is an American woman convicted of the December 1994 murder of her husband, Las Vegas real estate magnate Ronald Rudin. She was incarcerated at Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
Steven Allan Avery is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged in another murder case two years later.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
On November 2, 2002, U.S. Marine Corps Major Michael Brown attempted an indecent assault on a Filipina bartender in Okinawa, Japan. The bartender accused Brown of attempting to rape her and of throwing her cell phone into a nearby river; Brown denied the rape charges. The victim later recanted and attempted to withdraw the accusation, though prosecutors presented evidence that she had received a cash payment just before doing so.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Ellis Wayne Felker was an American convicted and executed in 1996 in Georgia for the 1981 murder of Evelyn Joy Ludlam, a young woman who was working as a waitress while she attended college.
Amanda Marie Knox is an American author, activist, and journalist. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy after her wrongful conviction in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student, with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. In 2024, an Italian appellate court upheld Amanda Knox's slander conviction for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher.
Zane Michael Floyd is an American convicted mass murderer who at the age of 23 killed four people and injured a fifth in a supermarket in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 3, 1999. After being convicted of the murders, Floyd was sentenced to death by a Clark County jury.
Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was a pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury. In the 1988 trial, under a controversial Alabama doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, although the jury had voted for a sentence of life imprisonment.
The murder of Mark Fisher occurred in the early morning hours of October 12, 2003, when the 19-year-old college student was beaten, shot five times, and left on Argyle Road in Prospect Park South, Brooklyn.
Clarence Arnold Elkins Sr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, and the rape and assault of his wife's niece, Brooke Sutton. He was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of his wife's six-year-old niece who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator.
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt — as, for example, a prerequisite step leading to parole — punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes that they did not commit, including in the face of a plausible chance at release.
Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman is a nonfiction book by author and journalist Cathy Scott about the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. Murder of a Mafia Daughter was first released in hardcover in 2002 by Barricade Books. A 2nd edition in trade-size paperback was released in June 2015 following the March 2015 arrest of suspect Robert Durst in Berman's murder. After the trial and conviction of the Durst for Berman's murder, and then Durst's death, a 20th Anniversary updated edition of the book was released.
Willie Jerome "Fly" Manning is on death row at Mississippi State Penitentiary, USA, with two death sentences for a conviction of double murder. He was previously also convicted and sentenced to death for an unrelated double murder, but the State Supreme Court overturned this verdict and ordered a new trial. The charges against him for the Jimmerson-Jordan murders were then dropped.
The murder of Karyn Hearn Slover occurred on September 27, 1996 in Decatur, Illinois, when Karyn Slover, a 23-year-old mother of one, disappeared shortly after leaving her job as an advertising sales representative. Two days later, authorities discovered Slover's dismembered remains, wrapped in plastic bags, in and near Lake Shelbyville.
Hae Min Lee was a Korean-American high school student who went missing on January 13, 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland, before turning up dead on February 9, 1999, when her corpse was discovered in Leakin Park, Baltimore. Her autopsy revealed that she had been killed by way of manual strangulation.
Alissa Leanne Bjerkhoel is an American litigation coordinator at the California Innocence Project (CIP), a law school clinic that investigates cases of factual innocence while training law students. Bjerkhoel was born in Truckee, California, and later graduated from California Western School of Law (CWSL) after previously obtaining a B.A. degree She has been an attorney with CIP since 2008. Bjerkhoel has served as counsel for CIP on numerous criminal cases, and achieved the legal exoneration of a number of convicted prisoners. Bjerkhoel serves as CIP's in-house DNA expert and also serves as a panel attorney with the nonprofit law firms Appellate Defenders, Inc. (ADI) and Sixth District Appellate Program (SDAP). She is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Bjerkhoel has won a number of awards.
Daryl Linnie Mack was an American man who was executed in Nevada for murder. Mack was sentenced to death for the October 1988 rape and murder of Betty Jane May in Reno. The murder went unsolved for twelve years until DNA evidence linked him to the crime. He was already in jail at the time, having been sentenced to life in prison without parole for the April 1994 murder of Kim Parks. He was sentenced to death, waived his appeals and asked to be put to death. Mack was executed via lethal injection at Nevada State Prison on April 26, 2006. He remains the most recent person executed in Nevada.
Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465 (1976), was decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that limited which claims of Fourth Amendment violations could be made by state prisoners in habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. Specifically, a claim that the exclusionary rule had been broken would be barred if state courts had already given it a full and fair hearing. The decision combined two cases that were argued before the Supreme Court on the same day with similar issues, one filed by Lloyd Powell and the other, titled Wolff v. Rice, filed by David Rice.
1 2 Smith, Jordan (2015-03-12). "Nightmare in Sin City: How a Rumor Sent a Teen to Prison for Murder in Vegas". The Intercept. First Look Media. Archived from the original on 2015-03-13. Retrieved 2015-03-19. In the long-running TV crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, set in Las Vegas, the city's police, crime scene analysts and medical examiner are portrayed as efficient and fearless advocates for truth in justice — they leave no stone unturned and are swift and resolute in their evidentiary analyses. In the real-life case of Duran Bailey, nothing could have been further from the truth.
1 2 Smith, Kim (2002-08-28). "Lobato receives 100 years in mutilation slaying of man". Las Vegas Sun. Archived from the original on 2014-08-26. Retrieved 2015-03-19. Kohn and fellow defense attorney Gloria Navarro told jurors that police never discussed the date of Bailey's death with Lobato. She thought they were questioning her about a Memorial Day weekend attack.
↑ LOBATO v. STATE,FindLawNo. 40370(Supreme Court of Nevada2004-09-03)("We reverse Lobato's convictions and remand for a new trial.").
↑ Kingsley, Amy (2012-07-13). "Update: The DA, DNA and the Kirstin Lobato murder case". Las Vegas CityLife. Archived from the original on 2015-02-17. Retrieved 2015-03-19. When she was arrested, Lobato readily told police that she'd been attacked, and had used her knife to slash at the man's exposed genitals. She sticks by that story to this day. Only her attack took place several weeks before Bailey's murder, supporters say.
↑ Sherrer, Hans (November 2010). Kirstin Blaise Lobato's Unreasonable Conviction: Possibility of Guilt Replaces Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt – Second Edition(PDF). Seattle, WA: The Justice Institute. ISBN978-1-4538-8624-3. Archived(PDF) from the original on 2013-06-11. Retrieved 2015-03-19. ...[I]mportant facets of Blaise's case can only be fleshed out in the longer form of a book. Among other things it enables the presentation of tables and graphs that aid visualizing such things as the details of Blaise's alibi, and that there is a lack of intersection between the details in her police statement and the peculiar facts of the man's murder.
↑ Smith, Jordan (2015-03-12). "Nightmare in Sin City: How a Rumor Sent a Teen to Prison for Murder in Vegas". The Intercept. First Look Media. Archived from the original on 2015-03-13. Retrieved 2015-03-19. But, Ravell and Moore point out, if there was one person in town who might have had a reason to harm Bailey as brutally as the prosecutors have insisted Lobato did, it was D---- P----, the woman who approached the police line on the morning of July 9. Bailey had allegedly raped her exactly one week before he was murdered, giving P----, or one of the neighbors who witnessed her troubling encounters with Bailey, a clear motive. While the report on P----'s rape was in the hands of police, it was never taken seriously by the state.
↑ Knapp, George (2013-02-13). "George Knapp: Judge Vega says she's sorry". Las Vegas CityLife. Las Vegas, NV. Archived from the original on 2015-01-27. Retrieved 2015-03-20. In all likelihood, it means she will never be able to win re-election, even if she chose to run again in 2014.
1 2 McCabe, Francis (2013-07-15). "Judge Vega won't seek re-election". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Las Vegas, NV. Archived from the original on 2013-08-21. Retrieved 2015-03-20. Earlier this year, the judge agreed to a public reprimand by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline for putting her personal schedule ahead of a murder trial.
↑ State Bar of NV (2013-07-17). "Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Valorie Vega will not Seek Re-Election". nvbar.org. State Bar of Nevada. Archived from the original on 2015-03-10. Retrieved 2015-03-20. Judge Valorie Vega has recently said she will not seek re-election prior to her term expiring in January 2015 and instead will let an open election take place.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
