I Faced Richard Ramirez in Court: My Experience During the 'Night Stalker' Jury Selection

Richard Ramirez, known as the “Night Stalker,” preyed on Southern California residents for more than a year, killing at least 13 before he was apprehended in 1985. Ramirez declared allegiance to the devil and even forced some victims to “swear to Satan.” It was a chaotic time, marked with a nationwide fear of the occult fueled by the “satanic panic.”.

Jury selection for Ramirez’s cases began almost three years later. Even that process was fraught with chaos.  I should know since I was among the potential jurors.

Like everyone else, I first heard of Ramirez from news reports. At first, he was just another newspaper headline to me, though I did worry that his satanic antics were adding fuel to the hellfire of criticism over obscene lyrics in music. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was formed in 1985 by politically connected Washington, D.C., moms with the goal of giving parents more control over the content their children consumed. As a rebellious teen, I played the very music Tipper Gore and company at the PMRC objected to. 

By the time Ramirez became infamous, I was a promoter booking bands. Some incorporated satanic iconography into their album art or sang about gory ways to kill or die. It was as innocent as today’s teens obsessing over Hello Kitty. We didn’t think anybody would take us seriously. Ramirez changed that. 

He was charged with 14 counts of first-degree murder, along with multiple charges of attempted murder, sexual assault and burglary. One murder charge was dropped.

Jury selection began in July 1988. At the time, I was too young to drink, yet old enough to serve on a jury and decide the fate of a serial killer. Nearly 1,600 potential jurors were vetted. The prosecutors alleged that the defense “systematically excluded Anglos and Asians,” according to the Los Angeles Times. As a Latino who drew pentagrams for fun, listened to hell-centric metal band Slayer and had even bumped into its lead singer, Tom Araya, at the Fender’s club in Long Beach, Calif., I was seemingly an ideal candidate for the defense. 

Superior Court judge Michael Tynan prefaced the selection process by telling us that the trial may last months. Ramirez, shackled at his wrists and ankles, was seated at the defense table. As Tynan continued to inform us of our responsibilities, some jurors kept looking over to Ramirez. I can’t speak for them, but I felt morbid curiosity and hoped to catch more than a glance of his jail uniform or dark, wavy hair. As if on cue, Ramirez turned his head and sneered at us. His intense glare alarmed some of the potential jurors, including me. I didn’t see remorse in his eyes, only contempt.

Although I was willing to fulfill my duty as a juror, a commitment of months to the case sounded too burdensome. I told Tynan I couldn’t serve because I had already planned a vacation. He teasingly asked if I could postpone the trip. I said I couldn’t and was excused. 

I no longer needed to worry about the case, but the selection process would continue for months, and they encountered bigger problems than a kid going on vacation. On January 12, 1989, a white prospective alternate juror claimed she overheard a Black juror say that he would not vote in favor of the death penalty until more whites were on Death Row. The juror denied the accusation. Nonetheless, he was kicked off the jury and replaced with an alternate. I share the Black juror’s concerns about Death Row's lack of diversity and wonder if I could have put that aside at the time of sentencing.

After six months of questioning, the court finally had 12 jurors and its alternates. The trial began on January 30.

Back then I didn’t grasp just how difficult finding a good jury pool could be for such a media-saturated case. It seems that comedian Kathy Griffin possibly didn’t either. She says she visited the court as a spectator during the trial. While on a lunch break, Griffin turned to a woman and started talking about the case. The woman walked away. Once court was back in session, Tynan told Griffin to stand and asked a host of questions. Apparently, the aspiring actress had inadvertently spoken to a juror, and the judge needed to determine if there was jury tampering. Decades later, Griffin formally apologized for disrupting the trial.

Somehow, the jury powered through the graphic evidence presented and horrific descriptions of the murders. Deliberations started on July 26. On August 14, juror Phyllis Singletary went missing. When court officials couldn’t reach her by phone, police stopped at her apartment where they found her body. L.A. County sheriff’s deputy Bill Wehner said at the time that Singletary suffered “a physical beating prior to being shot.” Her death was a result of a domestic dispute with her live-in boyfriend.

Some jurors wept upon hearing the news. The defense argued that the jurors were too distraught to resume their talks and raised the possibility of a mistrial. Tynan had an alternate juror step in, and deliberations resumed.

One juror who managed to get selected, Cynthia Haden, said she fell in love with Ramirez the first time she laid eyes on him. That didn’t stop her from voting against him. On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders and 30 other felonies. He received the death penalty two months later.

Haden and Ramirez declared love for each other. She reasoned that if Ramirez were ever released, “I think he would do exactly what he did before. Like I have a job, you have a job, his job is killing people. It’s what he was trained to do.” I can’t imagine how the prosecution would have allowed Haden to remain a juror if she had uttered those words before the trial began. 

Ramirez remained on Death Row until June 7, 2013, when he died of liver failure at age 53.

When Tynan excused me, I felt a sigh of relief. I later realized that serving on the jury as an aspiring journalist and writing about the case could have jumpstarted my career; it was an opportunity I didn’t see initially. Avoiding the trial and not learning firsthand about one the most infamous cases in the nation became one of my biggest career regrets.