Attorneys clash over pretrial detention in homicide case
Attorneys clashed over the case of Jeremiah Rael, a 31-year-old charged with first-degree homicide, during a motion hearing on Tuesday (March 7).
Rael was ordered detained after 8th Judicial District Judge Emilio Chavez deemed him too dangerous to release, a decision that prosecutor Cosme Ripol said was prudent, pointing out a “safe room” interview in which Rael’s son, a minor, claimed he had been sexually harassed by his father.
Defense attorney Aleksander Kostich refiled a motion to deliberate the pretrial detention, but the motion was neither granted nor denied, with Judge Chavez indicating he will issue a decision by the end of the week. No order had been issued as of press time on Wednesday (March 8).
The interview in question was conducted in 2019 in Utah, during one of the few times Rael’s child was under his biological mother’s supervision. The child has spent most of his life living with Rael in Taos. According to Ripol, these interviews reveal the true nature of Rael’s relationship with his son. However, Kostich compiled letters from Rael’s friends and family that describe him as a loving father and outstanding community member.
Kostich proposed to Chavez that Rael be held under house arrest. He remains hopeful in Chavez’s pending decision.
In addition to the letters, Kostich noted that the interviews in question were debunked in an earlier case for which he did not yet have the records. The case went before a district judge in Utah, who found the interviews to be misleading. The judge found problems with how the “safe room” interview had been conducted and said the child appeared to have been coached during the interview process.
Rael is accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend, Brandi Davis, on Oct. 24 of last year. According to photographs, Davis appeared to be climbing through a bathroom window when she was shot in the head. Witnesses say they saw a man fleeing the scene, and very blurry surveillance footage may substantiate those accounts.
The state has also claimed that Rael told his mother that he killed
Davis and spoke of having her testify against him.
According to Kostich, Rael is completely innocent and the pretrial detention is unjust. He went on to add that the only testing the defense has received so far has been a latent fingerprint testing, which, according to Kostich, does not contain sufficient enough details to execute an analysis. Kostich claims to be missing a toxicology report, a field investigative report and an internal file, among other items. He blamed these gaps in evidence on the state.
“So what you have is the State, again, just going along and not necessarily prosecuting the case; and what it does is, we’re in a holding pattern,” Kostich said. “Because how am I supposed to effectively defend the opinions of the witnesses against Mr. Rael? How am I supposed to confront those people without having any disclosure?”
Ripol took umbrage with Kostich’s complaint, assuring Judge Chavez that, while the state “forensic community” may deserve criticism, the conduct of his office is without fault.
“When the defense, without any basis, without any insight into what’s going on in my office, asserts that we’re flip-flopping around, doing nothing — the lab may not be getting out its reports, the forensic evidence community may not be getting out its reports, but I can assure this court that the 8th Judicial District Attorney’s Office is aggressively and ethically prosecuting this case,” Ripol said.