Trial of Guandique
On October 18, 2010, jury selection commenced in the
Superior Court of the District of Columbia before Judge Gerald I. Fisher.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez presented the names of
potential witnesses for the trial, including FBI agent Brad Garrett and the two
women whom Guandique was convicted of assaulting. At the start of the trial,
the prosecution's case was expected to take around four weeks and the defense was
expected to take one day. On October 25
and 26, Halle Shilling and Christy Wiegand testified about being attacked by
Guandique while independently jogging in Rock Creek Park. Wiegand recounted
that Guandique grabbed her from behind, dragged her down a ravine and held a
knife against her face.
On October 26, 2010, Levy's then-64-year-old father, Robert,
took the stand and refuted statements about his past suspicions of Condit.
Robert Levy testified that he told authorities during the early years of the
investigation that his daughter Chandra would have been too cautious to jog in
the woods alone, but said that he no longer believed this to be true. He said
that he also told police that his daughter and Condit had a five-year plan
between them to get married. In retrospect, Robert Levy admitted: "I just
said whatever came to mind just to point to him as the villain." Levy
added that he had been convinced that Condit was "guilty until we learned
about this character here," referring to Guandique. On November 1, Condit testified at the trial
and was asked on at least three occasions if he and Chandra Levy had been
involved in a sexual relationship. He replied, "I am not going to respond
to that question out of privacy for myself and Chandra." FBI biologist Alan Giusti testified that semen
found on underwear from Levy's apartment contained sperm matching Condit's DNA
profile.
Prosecution witness Armando Morales, who shared a cell with
Guandique at the U.S. Penitentiary in Kentucky, testified that Guandique was
concerned about being transferred between prisons in 2006 because of inmate
violence against suspected rapists. Morales stated that Guandique, a fellow
member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, confided to him that he had killed Levy
while trying to rob her, but said that he did not rape her. The prosecution rested their case on November
10, while dropping two out of the six charges against Guandique: sexual assault
and murder associated with that assault. On November 15, the defense rested its case
without calling Guandique to the stand. Other prison witnesses called by the
defense refuted Morales' testimony. Jose Manuel Alaniz said that Guandique made
no mention of rape or murder while sharing a cell with both Alaniz and Morales
at the penitentiary in Kentucky. Alaniz admitted under cross-examination that
he "didn't want to be too nosy" and was often asleep at the prison
while recovering from a gunshot wound. The prosecution dropped two more charges
because the statute of limitations had passed: kidnapping and attempted
robbery. During closing arguments for the remaining charges of first-degree
murder committed during a kidnapping and during a robbery, prosecutor Amanda
Haines contended that Guandique bound and gagged Levy after attacking her,
leaving her to die of dehydration or exposure in the park. Defense attorney
Santha Sonenberg countered with the lack of any DNA evidence connecting Guandique
to the crime scene. Calling the
prosecution's case "fiction", Sonenberg suggested that Levy had been
murdered elsewhere, with her dead body being dumped in the park.
The jury began deliberations on November 17, 2010. Scheduled proceedings of the case met delays
because of increased security at the courthouse. After two days of deliberations, all but one
juror had voted to convict Guandique. On
the third day, the jury asked Judge Gerald Fisher to clarify the definition of
assault. Fisher responded that any
physical injury could legally be considered an assault, regardless of how
small. On November 22, 2010, the jury
found Guandique guilty of both remaining counts of first-degree murder. After the trial, a juror said the testimony of
Morales was decisive in reaching the verdict. The conviction was called a
"miracle" for having been reached with only circumstantial evidence. Gladys Weatherspoon, who had previously
represented Guandique in the 2001 assault cases, stated that she was troubled
by the jury's verdict: "I just think they were going to convict anyway....
They felt bad for that woman, the mom. She's sitting in there every day." At a post-trial press conference, Susan Levy
said, "There's always going to be a feeling of sadness. I can surely tell
you, it ain't closure." Since the
conclusion of the trial, Susan Levy has acted to keep photographic evidence of
her daughter's remains sealed from the news media.
Sentencing and
appeals
On February 1, 2011, Guandique's attorneys requested a new
trial on the grounds that the verdict had been improperly attained. The 17-page
filing claimed that the prosecutors had appealed to the emotions of the jury,
using "references to facts not in evidence". The motion also alleged that one juror, who
did not take notes, had breached the judge's instructions not to be
"influenced by another juror's notes". The prosecution opposed a retrial, arguing that
the issue regarding the notes was no more than a technicality that did not have
a significant effect on the verdict.
Guandique faced a minimum penalty of 30 years to a maximum
of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In seeking the maximum possible sentence, the
prosecutors stated that Guandique "is unable to control himself and thus,
will always remain a danger to women". A memo submitted by the prosecution in
February 2011 cited Guandique's harassment of female staff in prison, including
soliciting a nurse and masturbating in front of guards. Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando
Campoamor-Sanchez disclosed that he had traveled to El Salvador with a
detective to investigate allegations that Guandique had fled his native country
because of suspected attacks against local women dating back to 1999. During the sentencing hearing on February 11,
Guandique said to Levy's family, "I
am sorry for what happened to your daughter", and insisted on his
innocence. Before Judge Gerald Fisher reminded Susan Levy to address the court
instead of the defendant, Levy said to him, "Did
you really take her life? Look me in my eyes and tell me." Fisher
denied Guandique's motion for retrial and handed down a sentence of 60 years in
prison, stating that Guandique "will
be a danger for some time. He's a sexual predator."
Guandique repeated his innocence during his sentencing. He
has maintained his innocence in the years since the trial.
On February 25, 2011, public defender James Klein filed an appeal
of Guandique's conviction with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
According to the court's annual report, appeals take an average of 588 days to
reach resolution. In December 2012 and
January 2013, a set of secret hearings was made known to the public, but the
subject of the meetings was sealed by the judge. After a third hearing in February, the judge
in the case unsealed transcripts from the previous hearings which revealed that
Klein was seeking a new trial based on new evidence in the case. A fourth hearing was scheduled for April 2013.
Charges dropped
On May 22, 2015, prosecutors dropped their opposition to a
new trial. This came largely due to
defense claims that the prosecution's star witness, Armando Morales, had
perjured himself on the stand. The defense contended that prosecutors failed to
disclose that Morales was a jailhouse informant with a reputation for being
untrustworthy. Morales had denied ever being an informant. The defense also
argued that Morales made up Guandique's confession in order to boost his stock
with prosecutors. On June 3, 2015, the
defense said a new witness, a neighbor, called 911 at 4:37 a.m. on the last day
Levy was alive to report hearing a 'blood-curdling scream', possibly coming
from Levy's apartment.[78] On June 4, 2015, Judge Gerald Fisher granted a
motion for the new trial. On June 12,
2015, Judge Robert E. Morin set the retrial of Guandique for March 1, 2016 but
in March, the trial date was moved to October 11, 2016.
In November 2015, prosecutors told a D.C. Superior Court
judge that their office failed to turn over documents to the defense before the
defendant's first trial. In December
2015, defense attorneys argued in new court filings that the charges should be
dismissed because of prosecutorial errors.
On July 28, 2016, prosecutors announced that they would not
proceed with the case against Guandique and would, instead, seek to have him
deported. According to The Washington
Post, prosecutors lost confidence in the case after learning that Morales, who
now lives in Maryland, was secretly recorded admitting lying on the witness
stand during the 2010 trial. Babs Proller, the woman who made the recording,
turned it over to the police. The U.S. Attorney's Office stated only that based
on new information that had come to light during the previous week, there was
no longer enough evidence to go forward with the retrial.[85] In episode 3 of
"An American Murder Mystery" on the case, it is mentioned that in
March 2017 Guandique lost his bid to remain in the United States and was
deported to his native El Salvador on May 5, 2017.
Media coverage
The disappearance of Chandra Levy became a national topic of
the news media in the summer of 2001, with 63 percent of Americans closely following
the case. The media swamped Levy's
parents from the moment they decided to go to Washington, D.C., in search of
their daughter. According to Condit,
there were about a hundred reporters camped out in front of his apartment
during the morning of September 11, 2001, but they all left after news spread
about that day's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Media critics and cable news executives later
cited the Levy case, as well as the concurrent sensationalist coverage of a
string of shark attacks, as a reflection of the manner of news coverage in the
United States before the September 11 attacks had taken priority.
In 2002, D.C. newspaper Roll Call first reported the
possible connection of Ingmar Guandique to the case, with little effect on the
news media's focus on Condit. Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin noted
the lack of headlines that an illegal immigrant had been questioned in the Levy
case. She said that in her review of 115 news items from the Lexis-Nexis
database, not a single mention of Guandique referred to his status as a
"criminal illegal alien". She called the "glaring omission"
of his status "a newsworthy act of negligence". She wrote that only
the very conservative Human Events reported that the Immigration and Naturalization
Service had approved his working legally while applying for temporary protected
status. That application was ultimately denied, but not before he had assaulted
two other women at Rock Creek Park.
In 2005, investigative journalist Dominick Dunne said on
Larry King Live that he believed Gary Condit knew more information about the
Levy case than he had been disclosing. Condit filed two lawsuits against Dunne,
forcing him into an undisclosed financial settlement on one of them. In 2008,
U.S. District Judge Peter Leisure dismissed the other suit that alleged
slander, because "The context in
which Dunne's statements were made demonstrates that they were part of a
discussion about 'speculation' in the media and inaccurate media
coverage."
During the summer of 2008, The Washington Post ran a 13-part
series billed, in part, as "a tale
of the tabloid and mainstream press pack journalism that helped derail the
investigation". The two investigative reporters behind the Post
series, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, wrote a book detailing their
investigation. The book, Finding Chandra, was published in May 2010. Commentators, including The Washington Post
Metro reporter Robert Pierre, wrote that emphasis on a glamorous white murder
victim, when "about 200 people are
killed in this city every year, most of them black and male", was
"absolutely absurd and dare I say, racist, at its core".
The media were criticized for their "rush to
judgment" in suggesting, sometimes blatantly, that Condit was guilty of
the murder, especially in the early days of the investigation. Some of the
reporters camped in front of Condit's Washington apartment house were quoted as
saying that they would remain there "until he resigns". When Ingmar Guandique was convicted in
November 2010 of murdering Levy, Condit's lawyer Bert Fields remarked, "It's a complete vindication but that
comes a little late. Who gives him his career back?"
On the 17th anniversary of the homicide, Levy's mother
continued to push for further investigation into her daughter's death.
Impact
Levy's death has had a lasting impact, due in part to the
efforts of her family and friends. Levy's disappearance came after a number of
other high-profile cases that led to the creation of resources for missing
young adults. For example, Levy's parents quickly turned for help to the Carole
Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, a nonprofit group that was
established in Modesto after three female hikers disappeared from a 1999 trip
to Yosemite National Park and were later found slain. That foundation, which offered the Levys staff
support and contributed towards a cash reward for information about Chandra's
disappearance, was merged into the Laci & Conner Search and Rescue Fund in
2009; Susan Levy had previously participated in the efforts to find Laci
Peterson, another missing woman from Modesto. In 1997, when Kristen Modafferi mysteriously
disappeared from the San Francisco Bay Area just three weeks after her 18th
birthday, her parents turned to their congresswoman for help they were
ineligible to receive from the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. As a result, Congress enacted "Kristen's Law" in October
2000, which established the National Center for Missing Adults (NCMA) within
the U.S. Department of Justice to coordinate such missing person cases. By the time Levy disappeared, institutions
were in place to provide her family with support and to assist in a nationwide
search to locate her. Although the Levy family moved quickly to mobilize all
such available resources, including offering a cash reward for information,
hiring their own investigators, and seeking media attention, those efforts to
locate Chandra Levy or find her killer were overshadowed by the speculation
surrounding her possible relationship with Condit. Susan Levy later joined with
Donna Raley, the mother of another young woman who disappeared in 1999 from
Modesto, to form "Wings of Protection", a support group for people with
missing loved ones. The Mary Ann Liebert
company, publishers of the Journal of Women's Health and Gender-Based Medicine,
presented their annual Criterion Award in May 2002 to Susan Levy for her work with
"Wings of Protection".
Newsweek magazine stated that the media may have become more
skeptical of "herd mentality" and open to alternative suspects after
the Levy case. The D.C. police claimed
that they would have discovered Levy's body earlier, if not for a
miscommunication regarding the scope of the search. Commanders had ordered a
search within 100 yards (91 m) of each road and trail in Rock Creek Park, but
searches were focused within 100 yards of roads only, resulting in the body
remaining undiscovered for a longer period of time. Both the Chief of Detectives, Jack Barrett, and
the Chief of Police, Charles H. Ramsey, have since left the force in D.C.
Ramsey became head of the Philadelphia Police Department; Barrett, who became
an analyst for an intelligence support firm in Arlington, Virginia, stated in
hindsight that the media had imposed "enormous amounts of pressure"
on the D.C. police. Morales, who is
serving time for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and crack cocaine,
was scheduled to be released on August 5, 2016. Condit retired from politics and moved with
his wife to Phoenix, Arizona, to manage real estate and open two Baskin-Robbins
franchises, which have since closed.
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