This article was written after Kirstin Lobato's conviction in 2002. Click here for the article written by Hans Sherrer for Justice Denied when she was convicted  after her retrial in 2006 -- "Possibility Of Guilt Replaces Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt:Las Vegas Detectives, Prosecutors And Judge Orchestrate Kirstin Blaise Lobato’s Serial Rape By The Legal System. "

Las Vegas Police and Prosecutors Frame Woman 170 Miles From Murder Scene - Kirstin Lobato’s “Very Peculiar Story”

By Hans Sherrer

Edited by Natalie Smith-Parra, JD Editor

Justice:Denied magazine, Issue 26, Fall 2004, pp 5, 19-23

http://justicedenied.org

Nineteen year-old Kirstin Blaise Lobato was convicted in May 2002 of murdering a homeless Las Vegas man who was beaten, stabbed and sexually mutilated on July 8, 2001. She was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison. Yet multiple witnesses confirm that on the day of the man’s death Kirstin was in Panaca, Nevada, 170 miles from Las Vegas. Her presence in Panaca is consistent with crime scene evidence that positively excludes her from having anything to do with his death, and that there is no evidence she had ever met the man. In a masterful frame-up that may be marveled at for decades as a text book case of how the three branches of the legal system interact to ensure a wrongful conviction, prosecutors worked hand-in-glove with the police to orchestrate, in the courtroom of an overtly compliant judge, the conviction of a plainly innocent young woman.


Kirstin Lobato's Picture in 2003

Kirstin Lobato in 2003

The Attempted Rape of Kirstin Lobato on May 25, 2001

    In the early morning hours of May 25, 2001, a man “bum-rushed” 18-year-old Kirstin Lobato as she got out of her car in the parking lot of the Budget Suites motel near the intersection of Boulder Highway and S. Nellis Boulevard in east Las Vegas. 1 As she “started to cry” and said ‘No’” the man slapped her and told her to “Shut up, bitch.” 2 She said later that “Nobody helped me,” even though there were “a bunch of doped out people walking on the street.” 3 Her father had taught her basic self-defense techniques and given her a “butterfly knife” for self-protection. 4 So with no one coming to her aid, she was able to fend off the sexual assault by stabbing at the man’s exposed groin area with the knife. 5 When she left in her car the man was laying in the parking lot “crying.” 6

    Kirstin did not immediately report the attack to the police. She explained later that she had reported previous sexual assaults and the police “basically blew me off. It’s been my experience that it doesn’t do any good.” 7 She may have also been reluctant to report the attack because she had been up for three straight days high on methamphetamines. When she first talked to police about the attack seven weeks after it occurred, the 5'-6" Kirstin described her assailant as a “really big” older black man who “seemed like a giant compared to me.” 8 It is known he didn’t die, because the Las Vegas police didn’t report the death of a man during the later part of May or early June who fits Kirstin’s description of her attacker. It is also likely he wasn’t hurt enough to bleed significantly, because even though he was above her, later inspection of her car didn’t turn up any blood residue that could have rubbed off her skin or clothes. The absence of any indication her attacker bled is consistent with Kirstin’s July 20, 2001 police statement about the attack, during which she did not make a single mention of her attacker bleeding, or that any blood was on her or her clothes. 

    Kirstin told family members and friends about the attack, and after she moved to Panaca in early July she told several other people. One of the people she told in Panaca was Lincoln County adult education teacher Dixie Tienken. 9 Told by Kirstin that she had not reported the assault to the police, in mid-July Tienken took it upon herself to report it to a Lincoln County juvenile probation officer she knew, who then relayed the information to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD)

Kirstin Lobato Was in Panaca, NV from July 2-9, 2001 10

    On July 2, 2001, about five weeks after the attack, Kirstin moved back to her parent’s home in Panaca, Nevada. Panaca is a high desert town of less than 700 people that is 170 driving miles north of Las Vegas. Located in sparsely populated Lincoln County, Panaca is perhaps best known as an off-road cycling/four-wheeling haven. Kirstin returned to Panaca to get away from the drug lifestyle she had become immersed in while living in Las Vegas after graduating in 2000 from Lincoln County High School in Panaca.

    On Thursday, July 5th, Kirstin’s mother, Becky Lobato, became concerned enough about her daughter’s lethargy and lack of energy that she took her to a doctor. The doctor ordered a blood test that was taken that day. He additionally instructed the collection of urine samples from Kirstin, that were subsequently collected on July 6th and the morning of the 7th. The blood and urine samples all tested negative for an identifiable illness or methamphetamines. On Friday, Becky took the day off from work to stay home with Kirstin, who continued to not feel well.

    Kirstin was feeling better the next day, Saturday, July 7th. Numerous people saw Kirstin in Panaca from the early morning until late that night when she went to sleep. Her father, Larry Lobato, saw her sleeping on the living room davenport when he returned home from work at 12:30 a.m. When her mother got up at 5:45 a.m. to get ready for work, she also saw Kirstin asleep. Later that morning, the 8th, a neighbor saw Kirstin four-wheeling, and other people saw her in and around Panaca throughout the day.

    Since arriving in Panaca on the 2nd, Kirstin had been talking on the phone with Douglas Twining, her boyfriend in Las Vegas. After he convinced her on Sunday the 8th, that he was kicking drugs and wanted to help her to do so, she agreed to move back to the city. So about midnight on Sunday, Doug left Las Vegas for Panaca to pick-up Kirstin. Since Doug didn’t know the Panaca area, he had to call Kirstin several times in the early morning hours of July 9th to get directions to her parents home. Later that Monday morning the two drove to Las Vegas. Kirstin had spent exactly a week in Panaca.

    Four days after returning to Las Vegas, Kirstin realized Doug wasn’t serious about quitting drugs. She called her parents and told them she wanted to come back to Panaca. So on July 13th her father drove to Las Vegas and picked her up.

Relationship of Panaca to Las Vegas


Duran Bailey’s Murder in Las Vegas on July 8, 2001

    At 10:30 p.m. on Sunday July 8, 2001, 44-year-old Duran Bailey was found dead behind a trash bin in a parking lot on Las Vegas’s west side. The parking lot is near The Palms Casino Resort, by the intersection of West Flamingo Road and Wynn Road. Bailey had been stabbed, beaten and sexually mutilated. The coroner established his time of death as “ten to eighteen hours” prior to discovery of his body. 11 So Bailey died sometime during the 8-hour period from 4:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on July 8th. Bailey was a 5'-10" tall black man who weighed about 135 pounds. He lived in the trash bin, and a woman who knew Bailey described him as a crack-smoker who dealt drugs.

    Bailey’s injuries were remarkable for their extent and the ferocity of the sustained attack against him. According to the coroner’s report, his injuries included: stab wounds on the back left side, left front, and front of his neck; scrapes and bruises on the left and right side of his face; a bloody nose; stab wound on his forehead; scrapes and gouges around both eyes; multiple fractures on both his upper and lower jaw; wounds on his left chest and left shoulder; four stab wounds in his lower rib cage area; a stab wound to his scrotum; multiple wounds to his lower left and right arm and hand; a fractured skull; and six of his teeth were knocked out. 12 Also after Bailey was dead, his penis was severed and his anus area was stabbed and sliced in a ritualistic like fashion. 13 The sustained ferocity of the attack on Bailey suggests it was carried out by a man. Consistent with that was the crime scene’s physical evidence that a man’s size 10 shoe-print was imprinted in blood around Bailey’s body, leading away from it, and on a piece of cardboard that covered his face. 14 The shoe-print of no other person was found around Bailey’s body.

    The brutality of Bailey’s death was not unexpected considering that he was a part of the drug underworld, and he was the sort of man who made enemies likely to bear a grudge. A week before his death a woman acquaintance of his, Diann Parker, reported to police that after she told him she no longer wanted anything to do with him, he forced his way into her apartment, beat her, and then raped her at knifepoint. 15 At the time of Bailey’s death, Parker said the police had told her they were investigating her report. 16 Oddly, neither Parker nor any of her Las Vegas acquaintances who had the motive, opportunity and means to kill Bailey, were investigated as suspects in his death. That failure to investigate is particularly questionable considering the nature of Bailey’s injuries suggests that whoever killed him intended for him to suffer serious pain and agony before dying.

Las Vegas Police Detectives Interrogate Kirstin On July 20, 2001

    Las Vegas homicide detectives investigating Bailey’s murder came across the report about the sexual assault on Kirstin. It attracted their attention for two reasons: It was received after July 8th; and it referred to Kirstin stabbing at her attacker’s groin area.

    On July 20th, two detectives, Thomas Thowsen and Jim LaRochelle, made the three hour plus drive to Panaca to interrogate Kirstin at her parent’s home. 17 The detectives began the tape recorded portion of their interrogation by indicating Kirstin had read her rights before the recorder was turned on. 18 Although the detectives informed Kirstin they were investigating a man’s death, they did not inform her it occurred on July 8th. So unbeknownst to her the event the detectives were investigating - Bailey’s death 12 days previously - was a different event than the one she was talking about – the rape attempt she fended off in May. During her interrogation, and without knowing she was doing so, Kirstin provided information about at least four key details excluding her from consideration for involvement in Bailey’s death.

The attack on Kirstin and Bailey’s death involved different struggles

    That the detectives and Kirstin were talking about two different events is obvious from her description of the attack on her that involved a much different struggle than the one resulting in Bailey's death:

Question (Thowsen) After you got done struggling with him, was he on the ground or standing up?
Answer (Kirstin) He was on the ground.
Q. Was he making any noise at that point?
A. He was, he was crying.
Q. And what did you do next?
A. I left. 19

    Kirstin’s account of an intense but brief assault against her after which she left her attacker very much alive, is starkly contrasted with Clark County’s Chief Medical Examiner Lary Simms’s determination the day after Bailey died, that extensive injuries had been inflicted on him from a violent pummeling and stabbing all about his upper body, and that after he was dead, he was sexually mutilated. 20 In the spring of 2001, Kirstin was a very slender, slightly built young woman - 5'-6" and about 100 pounds - definitely not the sort of muscular woman who might be able to physically manhandle a taller and heavier man.

The attack on Kirstin was by a man much taller and heavier than Bailey

    That the sexual assault on Kirstin was by a man with a much different physique than Bailey – who was 5'-10" and weighed about 135 pounds – was evident from her description of her attacker:

Question (Thowsen) And what did the person look like?
Answer (Kirstin) He was a black man, older.
…
Q. Okay, you remember how tall he was?
A. He was really big, that’s, and he seemed like a giant compared to me.
Q. Okay, how tall are you?
A. I’m 5'- 6"
Q. How much do you weigh?
A. I weigh like a 120 pounds. I probably weighed a close – closer to a 100 then. 25

    A man such as Bailey, who was 4" taller and weighed about 35 pounds more than Kirstin is not describable as “really big” and a “giant compared” to her. Consistent with that initial description, Kirstin later described her attacker as over 6' tall and weighing over 200 pounds.

The attack on Kirstin and Bailey's death were at different locations

    That the attack on Kirstin, and the altercation resulting in Bailey's death occurred at different locations is obvious from her description of the area around the Budget Suites’ parking lot:

Question (LaRochelle) And when you said this struggled occurred, where did it first happen at, in the proximity of the parking lot?
Answer (Kirstin) Um, from Boulder Highway, if you’re looking at it from Boulder Highway, like from where the shopping center is across the street say, right over here in the parking lot.
Q. (Both talking at once)
A. Like right around from the fountain, it’s right in front there.
Q. And you’re pointing to the left of the fountain?
A. Yeah, on the side...
Q. As you’re facing it from Boulder Highway?
A. Yeah if you’re facing it, the fountain’s right here, it’s right over here, ‘cause the, the thing goes in the, in the spot like that. 21

Kirstin’s description is of the area around the Budget Suites, on Las Vegas’s east side, that is almost eight miles from the scene of Bailey’s death near The Palms Casino Resort on the city’s west side.

The attack on Kirstin and Bailey’s death were on different dates

    That the attack on Kirstin was on a different date than Bailey’s death was made evident from Kirstin’s statement to the detectives that after the assault against her, and “over a month” before the detectives interrogation, she met a woman known as Mumblina who had also been sexually assaulted in Las Vegas. 22 Thus she inadvertently made the detectives aware – without knowing that the detectives were investigating the death of Bailey on July 8th - that the assault on her occurred more than two weeks prior to the violent struggle that resulted in Bailey’s death: 23

Question (Thowsen) Okay and did this person say anything about something happening to her or did she just seem upset?
Answer (Kirstin) She said that she had been hurt and that she couldn’t believe that something like that happened and she just kept saying it over and over.
Q. And how soon was it that you talked to her before you were attacked?
A. It was afterwards already.
Q. After you’d been attacked?
A. Yea, this has already been over a month ago. 24

    Detective Thowsen’s response indicates his surprise at Kirsten’s response that the attack on her occurred weeks prior to Bailey’s death. Yet neither Detectives Thowsen nor LaRochelle asked a single follow-up question to get additional details. If the detectives had bothered to ask, she would have directly informed them it happened in late May - six weeks before Bailey’s death. Somewhat curiously, the detectives asked Kirstin only one more unrelated nondescript question before abruptly terminating the interrogation.

Two other key facts distinguish the attack on Kirstin from Bailey’s death

    Two other important facts substantiating the inability of Kirstin to have been the survivor of the violent altercation that resulted in Bailey’s death would have been known to Detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle if they had taken a few hours to conduct a cursory investigation.

  1. Kirstin did not have any visible physical injuries or bruises that would be associated with a woman of her physique involved in a violent, extremely physical altercation with a man only 12 days earlier. 26 Furthermore, after poking around Panaca for less than an hour and making a few phone calls to Las Vegas, the detectives would have learned Kirstin did not visit a doctor or emergency room in Las Vegas or Panaca from July 8th to July 20th for the treatment of any injury.

  2. Kirstin described that “from about a week before” the attack “till about a week afterwards I was out of my mind on drugs.” 27 She also said she went without sleep while high on meth during the three days prior to the attack:

Question (Thowsen): So that [the attack] was the end of the third day of being up straight?
Answer (Kirstin): Yeah.
Q. Doing meth?
A. Yeah. 28

    Kirstin also told the detectives, “I just had all my, um, urine and everything like analyzed a couple weeks ago.” 29 She also mentioned that her “urine and everything” was “being checked out by the [my] doctors right now.” 30 Thus the detectives knew Kirstin had seen a doctor about the time of Bailey’s death, a “couple weeks” before the interrogation. If they had checked with her doctor in Panaca they would have learned that tests of either her blood or urine on the three consecutive days prior to July 8th didn’t detect the presence of methamphetamines. That would have also served to empirically support many other details Kirstin provided in her statement, such as meeting Mumblina over a month prior to the interrogation, which made it inescapably obvious that the assault upon Kirstin occurred weeks prior to Bailey’s death.

What the LVMPD detectives learned from Kirstin’s July 20th interrogation

    Thus Detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle learned during Kirstin’s interrogation:

    Those exclusionary facts were supported by two other facts the detectives could have easily confirmed in an hour or so by checking in Panaca and making several phone calls to Las Vegas:

What happened in the wake of Kirstin’s interrogation?

    In spite of the exculpatory nature of Kirstin’s interrogation, and that detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle had learned the attack on her had preceded Bailey’s death by many weeks, when it was over they did not thank her for her time, vow to track down her attacker, and bid her a good day. Instead they handcuffed Kirstin, arrested her on suspicion of murdering Bailey, and transported her to the Clark County Detention Center (CCDC) in Las Vegas.

    Multiple key facts related to the May 2001 assault against Kirstin are noticeably disparate from the facts related to Bailey’s brutal beating, stabbing, and ritualistic like sexual mutilation six weeks later in a different area of Las Vegas: So how was Kirstin tagged with his murder?

    Detectives Thowsen and LaRochelle appear to have pulled a ‘sleight of hand’ by superimposing the different facts related to the two unique events onto each other and then claiming they were the same event. That technique was a ‘quick and dirty’ way for the detectives to claim Bailey’s murder was solved and stamp “Investigation Closed” on his case file.

    On paper, the detective’s justification of Kirstin’s arrest based on their superimposition of the two completely unrelated events into one manufactured event was so clumsy and inelegant that it seems reasonable to think the prosecutor for Las Vegas - the Clark County District Attorney (DA) - would have seen through it within minutes. All the DA needed to do to arrive at the conclusion there was no substantial evidence to tag Kristin for Bailey’s murder, was to make a cursory comparison of her statement with the plainly different facts known about Bailey’s death.

    However that isn’t what happened. Relying on the detectives report, within days of her arrest the DA charged Kirstin with the first-degree murder of Duran Bailey, and the sexual penetration of his dead body.

Kirstin’s May 2002 Trial

    Kirstin’s trial began on May 8, 2002 in the courtroom of District Court Judge Valorie Vega. When it began the jurors, reporters and the public were unaware of a critical fact: Facing a minimum of 40 years in prison if convicted after a trial, Kirstin turned down the prosecution’s offer of a plea bargain to manslaughter that would have resulted in a three year prison sentence. 31 Kirstin rejected the deal, saying she was innocent and wouldn’t plead guilty to something she didn’t do.

    The prosecution’s case relied on at least six prongs. After an explanation of each prong, an analysis undermining its value to implicate Kirstin in Bailey’s death is explained.

Prosecution Prong One

    Kirstin acknowledged during her July 20, 2001 interrogation that she fought off a sexual assault by stabbing at her attacker’s groin with a knife. Her prosecutors claimed that since Kirstin did not report the attack to the police, she actually described her use of a knife to stab Bailey. They implied it was too coincidental that a knife would be used to stab at a man’s groin in two separate incidents in Las Vegas six weeks apart.

Prong One Rebuttal

    Kirstin’s description of the sexual assault included details about the parking lot of the Budget Suites motel where it occurred, including the closest roadway (“...looking at it from the Boulder Highway...”); identifying landmarks (“...right around from the fountain.”); and nearby buildings (“...the shopping center is across the street...”). 32 The scene of the attack she described is on Las Vegas’s east side, 7.7 miles from the scene of Bailey’s death on the west side of the city. 33

    Kirstin explained during her interrogation that she didn’t report the assault because she had reported previous sexual assaults and the police “basically blew me off. It’s been my experience that it doesn’t do any good.” 34 In addition to not thinking the police would do anything to pursue her attacker, Kirstin didn’t have a reason to report the assault because her assailant was alive when she left. Most importantly, since she stopped his assault without inflicting a serious injury, he couldn’t have been Bailey.

    It is with good reason that Las Vegas is known as Sin City. Furthermore the city doesn’t discourage that image, but it promotes it as a reason for people to visit. An example of that is a national advertising campaign during the summer of 2004 that emphasized being naughty is OK, because “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” Consistent with that advertising theme touting the city as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, is that sexual assaults are commonplace in Las Vegas. According to the FBI’s 2001 Uniform Crime Report (UCR), Las Vegas had one of the highest rates of rape in the country: 30% above the national average. 35 Las Vegas may be one of the most dangerous cities in the country for a young single woman like Kirstin, for the very reason that she said she didn’t report the May 2001 assault against her: the police would have simply ignored it. That is also indicated by the way the Las Vegas police blew off Diann Parker’s official report that Bailey raped her.

    Another twist on Kirstin’s case related to the tolerance of sexual assault in Las Vegas, is if the police had taken Parker’s report of being raped by Bailey seriously and acted on it, he couldn’t have been killed on July 8th if he had been arrested and was unable to make bail. 36

    In addition to being a sexual assault center, murder was also commonplace in Las Vegas in 2001: Its murder rate was double the national average. 37 Thus Bailey’s death was not unusual in the sense that there was an average of almost three murders per week in Las Vegas during 2001.

    So it is known that Las Vegas was a crime haven in 2001. Considering the “Wild West” crime atmosphere that prevailed in Las Vegas behind the glitzy “fun time” facade of the Strip, it is anything but coincidental that a knife could be involved in two different and unrelated incidents six weeks apart – one involving a sexual assault and the other a murder.

    Furthermore, the area around the Budget Suites motel remains dangerous for a single woman. According to the LVMPD’s website, in the 60 days prior to November 4, 2004, there were 102 serious crimes reported within a one-half mile radius of the motel, and 44 of those were assaults. 38 During the same period of time, there were 157 serious crimes reported within a one-half mile radius of Bailey’s death, and 58 of those were assaults. 39 So in the fall of 2004 within a one-half mile radius of the two areas, there were an average of over six serious crimes - and almost two assaults - reported every day.

    Consequently, it would not be unusual for Kirstin to be sexually assaulted in late May 2001 in east Las Vegas, and six weeks later for Bailey to be murdered eight miles away in west Las Vegas. Considering the details in her statement of July 20, 2001 that bear no relationship to Bailey’s crime scene, but matches the area around the Budget Suites motel and is consistent with what was going on in her life in May 2001 - but not July - there is no reason to doubt for a single second that Kirstin was attacked as she described.

    So it seems strange that the response of Las Vegas’s law enforcement community to Kirstin’s report of being criminally sexually assaulted wasn’t to launch an investigation to find her attacker, but to charge her - the victim - with an unrelated murder that occurred six weeks after the attack.

Prosecution Prong Two

    Kirstin acknowledged during her July 20, 2001 interrogation that she had been on a week long meth binge up to the time of the assault on her. Her prosecutors speculated that desperate for drugs to continue her binge, Kirstin agreed to exchange sex with Bailey for meth. They further speculated that she stabbed him when he refused to fulfill his end of the bargain. 40 Thus the prosecution speculated Bailey’s stabbing death was the result of a drug deal gone bad.

Prong Two Rebuttal

    A sample of Kirstin’s blood was drawn and analyzed when her mother took her to the doctor in Panaca on Thursday, July 5th. Kirstin then provided a urine sample on the next two days as a follow up to help her doctor determine what was ailing her. The blood and urine samples all tested negative for the presence of meth. That establishes Kirstin was not on a meth run in the days preceding Bailey’s death. That fact, combined with multiple eyewitnesses, phone records, etc., corroborates that she was in Panaca at the time of Bailey’s death.

    The prosecution’s claim that Bailey’s stabbing death resulted from a drug deal gone bad is undermined by the FBI’s 2001 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), that documents there were only 15 people murdered nationwide by a knife during a drug dispute, out of 13,752 total murders. 41 So a drug related knife murder is so rare that they only occurred slightly more than once a month in a nation of almost 290,000,000 people. Furthermore, almost 100 times more people were killed by a knife in 2001 during a non-drug related dispute than one involving drugs. 42 Consequently, it is much more likely than not, that Bailey’s knifing during the course of being savagely beaten was related to a reason other than a drug dispute. Thus the nature and extent of Bailey’s many injuries is consistent with his death being connected to a non-drug related reason.

 A Woman’s Mutilation of a Dead Man is as Rare as a Dodo Bird

Kirstin Lobato’s exclusion as Duran Bailey’s killer is also supported by an analysis of his mutilation. Although it isn’t direct "evidence" of her innocence, it is anecdotal evidence that it has been difficult to find a single known instance in this country of a woman’s use of a knife to sexually mutilate a man’s dead body.

Clark County Medical Examiner Simms testified that of over 4,000 autopsies he had performed, about 12 involved mutilation of a man’s body by another man – but none by a woman. 82 Furthermore, his testimony that based on his experience a male is only sexually mutilated by another male, is supported by what is reported among pathologists, "I’ve never read about or been involved in a case where this kind of injury pattern was done by a female." 83

ME Simms’ experience is also supported by the observation of Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist in New York. At the time of Kirstin’s arrest, he said the only case he could recall of a woman mutilating a man’s body was Lorena Bobbitt’s severing of her living husband’s penis – and she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. 84

Dr. Welner also made a prophetic observation about Kirstin’s case considering all that is now known about it, "This is a very peculiar story. It is the kind of thing that just happens in the movies." 85

Prosecution Prong Three

    Korinda Martin claimed that after meeting Kirstin at the Clark County Detention Center on July 23, 2001 (three days after Kirstin’s arrest), Kirstin loudly boasted on multiple occasions about killing Bailey. 43 Martin also claimed that Kirstin told the women “graphic descriptions of how she killed and mutilated” him, and that Martin kept a log of Kirstin’s alleged boasts. 44

Prong Three Rebuttal

    Newspaper and television reports conveyed all the accurate details about Bailey’s death that Korinda Martin testified Kirstin told anyone who would listen at the CCDC. Specifically, the accurate details testified to by Martin were included in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article published on July 25, 2001 - two days after Martin said she met Kirstin. 45 Martin also testified about “details” of the murder that weren’t publicized in the media. However those were inconsistent with the crime scene, which tends to indicate Martin contrived them. 46 She claimed e.g., that Kirstin boasted she “amputated” Bailey’s penis and stuck it “down his throat.” 47 Bailey’s penis was actually found laying under some trash near his body. In addition, Martin didn’t produce in court the log she claimed to have kept of Kirstin’s alleged boasts.

    Further undermining the truthfulness of Martin’s testimony, is that the prosecution didn’t produce a single other prisoner who claimed to have heard on a single occasion, Kirstin’s alleged loud jailhouse braggadocio.

    The prosecution had to ignore the suspect nature of Martin’s testimony because it was absolutely critical to their case against Kirstin. None of the forensic evidence collected from the murder scene - that included blood, hair, chewing gum, tire tracks, etc. - or Bailey’s body, or Kirstin’s car, or personal items seized by the police, found any evidentiary link between Kirstin and Bailey’s death. Since Martin’s claim of hearing Kirstin’s boasts was the prosecution’s only “evidence” that she was at the scene of Bailey’s death, and everything else about their case speculatively associated her with it, Martin was the prosecution’s “star witness.”

    As a jailhouse snitch whose testimony was the lynchpin of the prosecution’s case, an obvious question to ask is if Martin’s testimony was contrived so she that could benefit from helping the prosecution out of its evidentiary “jam” of not having any direct evidence linking Kirstin with Bailey’s death.

    At the time of Kirstin’s arrest, Martin was a certified nursing assistant being held at the CCDC awaiting sentencing for her guilty pleas to robbing and coercing one of her patients. 48 Prior to Martin testifying at Kirstin’s trial, several handwritten letters were sent to a former co-prisoner of Martin’s, Brenda Self, requesting that she mail the letters to Martin’s sentencing judge. The letters, worded as if they were written by Self, suggested that Martin should be given a lenient sentence so she could be released to care for the wheel-chair bound Self. Copies of those letters, that had been sent to Self in an envelope bearing the CCDC’s return address and Martin’s prisoner ID number, were provided to Kirstin’s court appointed lawyers prior to her trial. Although the prosecution denied it had made a specific deal with Martin for her testimony, out of the presence of the jury one of Kirstin’s lawyers questioned Martin about whether she wrote the letters. If she answered in the affirmative, it would tend to show she was hoping to get a tangible benefit from her testimony against Kirstin. However Martin denied under oath that she wrote or mailed the letters:

Question (Kirstin’s lawyer Kohn) I’m going to show you an item marked Defense Exhibit G. Do you recognize that?
Answer (Martin) No.
Q. No?
A. No.
Q. You didn’t send that?
A. No, sir. 49

    The prosecutors argued the letters should be excluded as evidence and testimony about them barred from the jury, because the letters were “extrinsic,” since they had nothing directly to do with the question of Kirstin’s guilt or innocence. 50 Judge Vega agreed, so the jury wasn’t made aware of the letters. 51 The true significance of those letters in undermining Martin’s credibility was discovered after Kirstin’s trial. That is when a Las Vegas police document examiner compared the letter writer’s handwriting with that of Martin. In September 2004 the Nevada Supreme Court wrote, “The LVMPD expert concluded that Martin probably authored the first letter and definitely the second.” 52

    When Martin’s perjurious testimony was brought to the attention of Clark County prosecutors, they ignored the evidence and refused to prosecute her.

    Martin’s letters are significant because they show she viewed her testimony against Kirstin as self-serving by possibly contributing to shortening her sentence. 53 Kirstin’s lawyer Gloria Navarro observed, “Clearly, she would say anything to help herself; she would even commit perjury.” 54 Supporting that more than just Martin’s testimony about not writing the letters was perjurious, is that no one corroborated her claim that Kirstin had made incriminating boasts at the CCDC related to Bailey’s death.

    In a possible effort to enhance her credibility to Kirstin’s jurors, Martin also may have perjured herself by falsely testifying she is a nurse. Martin was not a registered nurse according to the Nevada State Board of Nursing, and her certification as a nursing assistant expired on September 21, 2001. 55 So at the time of Kirstin’s trial in May 2002, Martin had no nursing related credentials whatsoever.

    Martin continued her criminal career while serving her sentence for robbery and coercion. It is a felony in Nevada for a staff member and a prisoner to engage in any sexual activity. In January 2004 Martin gave birth to a baby fathered by a prison guard, and Martin and the guard were both indicted on March 16, 2004, of “one count of voluntary sexual conduct.” 56

Prosecution Prong Four

    Kirstin was portrayed as a person of low moral character based on her living in the sticks of Lincoln County, and her onetime lifestyle as an illegal drug user who on two occasions engaged in amateur exotic dancing. Her prosecutors thus speculated it was not only plausible that Kirstin would associate with a homeless person like Duran Bailey, but agree to trade sex with him to obtain drugs, and then kill him for spite when he reneged.

Prong Four Rebuttal

    There was no testimony during Kirstin’s trial that supported the prosecution’s speculation that because of her upbringing or lifestyle she would trade sex for drugs, that she had ever done so, or that she would ever harm anyone except in self-defense. However the success of the prosecution’s tactic of smearing Kirstin as a bad person - in part because she was from Panaca - who would do anything, was demonstrated when several jurors sent the judge notes that they were afraid of Kirstin’s family seated in the courtroom - who lived in the sticks of Lincoln County. 57

Prosecution Prong Five

    To explain how Bailey’s extensive injuries could have been inflicted by a person of Kirstin’s slender physique, the prosecutors speculated that after she stabbed him, he fell to the ground, and she then repeatedly hit him with an aluminum baseball bat that she kept in the back seat of her car for self-protection.

Prong Five Rebuttal

    Lary Simms, Clark County’s Chief Medical Examiner, testified that among Bailey’s serious injuries (Bailey had at least 33 identifiable injuries), he suffered several bludgeoning type injuries, including “multiple fractures on both upper and lower jaws,” “six teeth knocked out,” and “skull fractures.” 58

    However, ME Simms’ testimony didn’t support the prosecution's speculation that Bailey’s injuries were inflicted with Kirstin’s baseball bat. ME Simms testified Bailey, “didn’t have any skull fractures that were depressed like, you know, a bat would depress somebody.” 59 On cross-examination he also testified that the skull fractures and the accompanying bleeding were consistent with his head striking the concrete where his body was found. 60

    Supporting Simms conclusion that Bailey’s injuries were inconsistent with those caused by a bat was the testimony of Thomas Wahl, a technician with the LVMPD crime lab: “There was no blood, hairs or tissue recovered from the aluminum baseball bat or detected on that item.” 61 If Bailey’s blood had been washed off the bat, sophisticated blood detection techniques could have been expected to detect trace residue.

    The separate exclusionary analysis of the bat evidence by MD Simms and lab technician Wahl was supported by the expert retained by Kirstin’s lawyers to analyze the prosecution’s physical evidence. The defense’s expert was George Schiro, a forensic scientist of national repute. Schiro was not only associated with the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory, but in 2004 he is serving as the Chairperson of the national Association of Forensic DNA Analysts and Administrators. 62 Schiro’s background with a police crime lab might influence critical observers to consider his conclusions as more objective than those of some defense retained experts: His objectivity is also indicated by the fact that Kirstin's case was only the fourth one in which he testified as an expert for a defendant, while he had been an expert for the prosecution in over 100 cases. 63 Considering his background, there is no reasonable basis on which to challenge Schiro’s professional integrity or credentials, or characterize his analysis of the prosecution’s evidence in Kirstin’s case as biased. He documented his findings in a Forensic Science Report. 64   

    Since it is known that Bailey bled profusely from his many wounds, and the prosecution speculated Kirstin knifed him first, he would have been bleeding heavily at the time she allegedly hit him with the bat. However, Schiro’s analysis of the crime scene ‘blood cast off’ evidence didn’t support that speculation. He wrote in his report:

“When a person is bleeding and repeatedly beaten with a long object, such as a baseball bat or tire iron, or is repeatedly stabbed using an arcing motion, then cast-off blood spatters corresponding to the arc of the swing are produced ...The confined space of the crime scene enclosures and the lack of cast-off indicate that a baseball bat was not used to beat Mr. Bailey. The beating was more likely due to a pounding or punching type motion.” 65

    Thus, Bailey was not struck with a bat or other long object, but likely by a person’s fist. Considering the pounding inflicted on Bailey, his assailant’s fists would likely have suffered some sort of visible wound(s) or bruises. Kirstin neither had any such injuries, nor did she have – at 100 pounds - the physique necessary for her to have pummeled Bailey. Schiro’s analysis of the ‘blood splatter patterns’ also tended to exclude Kirstin:

“The photographs demonstrate numerous blood spatter patterns. There is no documentation of blood spatter above a height of 12 inches on any of the surrounding crime scene surfaces. This indicates that Mr. Bailey received his beating injuries while lying on the ground. The photographs of his pants also do not indicate the presence of any vertically dripped blood. This indicates that he did not receive any bleeding injuries while in a standing position.” 66

    Schiro’s ‘blood splatter’ analysis that Bailey was stabbed while lying down undermines the prosecution’s speculation that Kirstin stabbed Bailey while he was standing up. Kirstin’s said in her statement that she “was laying down” when she stabbed up at her assailant as he hovered above her with his pants down. That means if he bled, blood would have dripped down onto his pants - but Schiro found there was no “presence of any vertically dripped blood.” Thus his ‘blood splatter’ analysis is consistent with the conclusion that the incident Kirstin described in her statement was different than the one during which Bailey died.

    So ME Simms’ testimony that Bailey’s skull fracture was consistent with his head striking concrete indicated that Bailey fell after being shoved or punched by a physically larger and stronger person. Lab technician Wahl’s testimony indicated that Kirstin’s bat was not used to strike any person. While forensic expert Schiro’s analysis complimented both their conclusions by determining Bailey was not struck with a bat or other long object, and his injuries that bled were inflicted from him being beaten and stabbed while he was in a prone position. Unfortunately for Kirstin, Judge Vega did not allow the jury to hear Schiro’s exculpatory blood ‘cast off’ and ‘blood splatter pattern’ testimony. The prosecution objected that they had not been provided with proper notice of his testimony by her lawyers, and Judge Vega agreed. 67

Prosecution Prong Six

    To fit their claim that for the three days prior to Bailey’s death Kirstin was awake on a meth binge, her prosecutors claimed she was in Las Vegas from at least July 5th until July 13th, when her father picked her up and took her back to Panaca.

Prong Six Rebuttal

    Kirstin stated during her July 20, 2001 interrogation that she had been on a non-stop meth binge for a week prior to, and a week after the assault against her. Bailey was killed on July 8th, which means that if the attack she referred to was by Bailey, then from July 1st to July 15th she would have been high on meth, going for days at a time without sleep, and that she was in Las Vegas during the time of his death – between 4:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Yet on Monday, July 2nd, Kirstin moved from Las Vegas to live at her parents home in Panaca, and multiple people attest to seeing Kirstin in and around Panaca at various times from July 2nd to July 9th – including the early morning, late morning, afternoon and evening of the 8th. Furthermore, not a single one of those people has reported she was high on meth, which is consistent with the results of the blood sample taken at her Panaca doctor’s office on July 5th, and the urine samples she provided on July 6th and 7th – that all tested negative for meth.

    Although she was not allowed to testify about it, Kirstin’s mother, Becky, passed a lie detector test that included questions concerning Kirstin’s presence in Panaca from the 2nd through the 9th, and specifically, that she saw Kirstin sleeping on the living room davenport at 5:45 a.m. on July 8th. Kirstin also testified to being in Panaca from the 2nd to the 9th, and although she wasn’t allowed by the judge to tell the jury, she took and passed three separate lie detector tests that included questions concerning her presence in Panaca on July 8th, the day that Duran Bailey was murdered 170 miles away in Las Vegas.

    Phone records corroborate that Kirstin’s boyfriend at the time, Doug Twinning, called her from Las Vegas numerous times during the week she was in Panaca, including several times during the early hours of July 9th when he needed directions to her parents house as he drove up from Las Vegas to pick her up and take her to Las Vegas.

    The most critical time for the prosecution to establish Kirstin was in Las Vegas was Bailey’s time of death, between 4:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on July 8th. 68 Sunrise that day was 5:30 a.m. 69 Apart from the numerous witnesses placing Kirstin in Panaca on July 8th, she twice told the detectives on July 20th that she was attacked in the Budget Suites’ parking lot at night – which makes sense, considering many people would likely have been around in the daytime willing to help her, after seeing the attack or hearing the commotion. Her mother saw her asleep at 5:45 a.m. So it is physically impossible for Kirstin to have been present in Las Vegas at the time of Bailey’s death: Since if she had left for Las Vegas at say 6 a.m., when it was already daylight, she couldn’t have been involved in an altercation at night. Furthermore, she couldn’t have driven the six plus hour round-trip between Panaca and Las Vegas, in addition to taking the time to do her business in Vegas, and return in time for a neighbor to see her four-wheeling later that morning.

    However the jury was unaware of some of the exculpatory evidence and testimony corroborating Kirstin’s presence in Panaca from July 2nd through July 9th. Citing inadequate notice to the prosecutors, Judge Vega barred the jury from being exposed to that exculpatory alibi information.

The prosecution’s case didn’t implicate Kirstin in Bailey’s death

    Consequently, none of those six prosecution prongs infer, much less substantively support identifying Kirstin as Bailey’s killer. That absence of inculpatory evidence is consistent with the exculpatory testimony of forensic expert Schiro that Judge Vega did not allow the jury to hear.

    After giving his very limited testimony, Schiro, who had spent the overwhelming majority of his career as a prosecution witness identifying crime scene evidence that inculpated an accused person, told reporters in the courthouse hallway what Judge Vega barred him from telling Kirstin’s jurors: “There is no evidence to tie Ms. Lobato to the crime scene. I feel the evidence is even exclusionary on her behalf.” 74

    Indicative of the patently false assumptions and general incoherence that underlay the prosecution’s case, was the detectives who interrogated Kirstin on July 20, 2001, conducted an investigation that was so sloppy and incomplete that they didn’t even discover how to spell her name right before hastily arresting her for first-degree murder. In her statement they spelled her name Kirsten - not Kirstin.

Conclusion of Kirstin’s Trial

    After more than a week of testimony, the closing arguments were made by the prosecution and Kirstin’s lawyer on the afternoon of Friday, May 18, 2002. Chief Deputy District Attorney William Kephart centered his argument on the July 20, 2001 interrogation in which Kirstin acknowledged stabbing at a man’s groin area during a sexual assault. He claimed that constituted a confession to Bailey’s murder.

    Kirstin’s lawyer, public defender Philip Kohn, a former law school professor who had never handled a criminal case before, emphasized that the detectives did not identify the date of the man’s stabbing they were talking about when they interrogated Kirstin on July 20th. Furthermore, he pointed out that the detectives and prosecutors were wrongly assuming she was talking about Bailey, when none of the details of the stabbing she described matched his death. Kohn told the jury, “Two people talking about two different incidents.” 75 Kohn compared the prosecution of Kirstin to the Salem Witch Trials, during which many innocent women were put to death, “Women who were different, who were odd and who said stupid things.” 76

    Judge Vega finished reading the jury instructions at 9 p.m., and she gave the jurors the option of beginning deliberations on Monday morning, or immediately. They choose to begin deliberating immediately, and after five hours announced they had arrived at a verdict. At 3 a.m. their verdicts of guilty to both counts were read in court, and Kirstin, who had been free on $50,000 bond, was taken into custody.

    Her lawyer, Gloria Navarro told reporters, “She placed her belief in the justice system, and she ended up being convicted of a crime that she did not commit.” 77

    On July 2, 2002, Kirstin was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison for her conviction of Bailey’s murder, and a 5 year concurrent sentence for her conviction of sexual penetration of a dead body. Judge Vega then added a 20 year sentence to be served consecutively, based on her determination that since Bailey was stabbed with a knife the deadly weapon enhancement applied. So Kirstin’s sentence was to serve a minimum of 40 years before becoming eligible for parole, at the age of 59.

Kirstin’s Conviction Reversed by Nevada Supreme Court on September 3, 2004

    On September 3, 2004 the Nevada Supreme Court reversed Kirstin’s conviction and remanded her case for a new trial. The reversal was based on Judge Vega’s failure to allow Kirstin’s lawyers to cross-examine Korinda Martin about the letters suggesting leniency that she wanted sent to her sentencing judge. 78 The Supreme Court characterized “Martin as the State’s “star witness,” and noted, “The proffered letters and extrinsic evidence relating to them confirmed Martin’s desperation to obtain an early release from incarceration and her willingness to adopt a fraudulent course of action to achieve that goal.” 79 The Court also ruled that it was prejudicial error for Judge Vega to bar Kirstin’s lawyers from examining Brenda Self about the letters, as well as introducing the letters themselves. 80 Having found sufficient grounds to reverse Kirstin’s conviction, the Court didn’t rule on the issues of Judge Vega’s barring of exculpatory expert and alibi testimony. The Court implied any such errors could be cured during Kirstin’s retrial. 81

    A bail hearing was held on October 28, 2004, to determine if Kirstin could be released on bail pending her retrial. Judge Vega set her bail at $500,000 in cash or equivalent assets. Although the reversal of Kirstin’s conviction means she is once again shielded by the presumption of innocence, that bail is ten times her $50,000 pre-trial bail.

    Since Kirstin’s family is not one of means, she continues to be held in custody as this issue of Justice:Denied goes to press in mid-November 2004. Her retrial is scheduled for February 2005.

    It is worth noting that while Kirstin waits for the legal system to right her wrongful prosecution and imprisonment for a crime she did not have anything to do with, she is pursuing a much different path than the one taken by Korinda Martin, the jailhouse snitch who was the prosecution’s “star witness” against Kirstin. In March 2004 Martin was indicted for her criminal activity while imprisoned at a Nevada women’s prison. In contrast, during the several years since she was imprisoned as a 19-year-old teenager, Kirstin has evolved into an articulate, mature, focused young woman. She practices yoga daily, she is a vegetarian, she is enrolled in a correspondence paralegal course and she has taken college courses.


Kirstin can be written at:

Kirstin Lobato 95558
FMWCC
4370 Smiley Road
Las Vegas, NV  89115-1808

Kirstin’s outside contact is:

Michelle Ravell

Email: Justice4kirstin@cox.net

The Free Kirstin’s Website, http://www.justice4Kirstin.com


Contact Hans Sherrer at: hsherrer@justicedenied.org

Endnotes

1. ‘Sensitive’ Defendant Denies Mutilation Slaying Charge, Glenn Puit, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 16, 2002. Kirstin told police in her statement of July 20, 2001, that after the assault she drove her car to the house of her ex-boyfriend, Jeremy Davis. She said he wasn’t home and she left it there. See, Statement to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department by Kirsten Blaise Lobato, Event #010708-2410, July 20, 2001, p. 8 (hereinafter, Statement to LVMPD). In his statement to the police, Jeremy Davis said Kirstin left her car at his house on Friday, May 25, 2001, the day before the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. During Kirstin’s trial Davis testified she left her car at his house on May 24 or May 25, 2001. For purposes of this article, it will be assumed that Mr. Davis initial statement of May 25, 2001 was correct, since it was closest to when the event occurred.

2. ‘Sensitive’ Defendant Denies Mutilation Slaying Charge, supra.

3. Statement to LVMPD, at 7.

4. ‘Sensitive’ Defendant Denies Mutilation Slaying Charge, supra.

5. Id.

6. Statement to LVMPD, at 7.

7. ‘Sensitive’ Defendant Denies Mutilation Slaying Charge, supra.

8. Statement to LVMPD, at 5.

9. Mutilation Slaying Trial: Attack Reconstructed in Court Testimony, Glenn Puit (staff), Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 10, 2002.

10. A timeline of Kirstin in Panaca on July 6, 7, and 8, 2001 is at: http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/justiceforkirstin/Time_Line/time_line.html. Additional info, including Kirstin’s father picking her up in Las Vegas on July 13, 2001, is at:

http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/justiceforkirstin/Kirstin_s_Story/kirstin_s_story.html

11. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 16 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

12. Reasonable Doubts  Part 6, 10-21-2003, http://www.justice4Kirstin.com/rd6.html

13. Id.

14. Reasonable Doubt - Part 3, 10-7-2003, http://www.justice4Kirstin.com/rd3.html

15. Murder Trial: Witness: Man Raped Her Week Before His Slaying, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Glenn Puit, May 15, 2002.

16. Id.

17. The LVMPD central headquarters are at 400 Stewart Avenue, Las Vegas. Yahoo!.com estimates the driving time from 400 Steward Avenue to Kirstin’s parents home in Panaca as 3 hours and 31 minutes.

18. Statement to LVMPD, at 2.

19. Id. at 7.

20. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 16 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

21. Statement to LVMPD, at 20.

22. Id. at 27. Kirstin said she was called Mumblina because she mumbled a lot.

23. A month before the interrogation would have been June 20th, which was more than two weeks before Bailey’s death on July 8th.

24. Statement to LVMPD, at 27 (emphasis added).

25. Id. at 4-5.

26. Reasonable Doubt - Part 3, 10-7-2003, supra, (“No cuts, abrasions, broken fingernails, or healing bruises can be seen in the photographs of Ms. Lobato’s hands.”).

27. Statement to LVMPD, at 3.

28. Id. at 24.

29. Id. at 16.

30. Id. at 16.

31. Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, Glenn Puit, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 29, 2002..

32. Statement to LVMPD, at 20.

33. This distance was returned by Yahoo! Maps, at maps.yahoo.com, using the address of S. Nellis Blvd and Boulder Hwy, Las Vegas, NV near the Budget Suites Hotel, and the address of The Palms Casino Resort at 4321 W Flamingo Rd, Las Vegas, NV.


34. ‘Sensitive’ Defendant Denies Mutilation Slaying Charge, supra.

35. Crime in the United States 2001, Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington D.C., Table 6, Index of Crime (There were 447 reported rapes in Las Vegas in 2001.).

36. Although it is not known if Mumblina reported her assault, considering the cavalier attitude of the LVMPD toward rape and attempted rape, it would be understandable if she didn’t do so.

37 Crime in the United States 2001, supra, at Table 6, Index of Crime (There were 133 identifiable murders in Las Vegas in 2001).

38. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Website, Crime View Community at, http://www.lvmpd.com/website/LasVegasMetroCVC/wizard.asp. The reported crimes were, Assault/Battery, Burglary, Robbery, and Stolen Motor Vehicle.

39. Id.

40. Jurors Deliberate Severed Penis Slaying, Glen Puit, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 17, 2002.

41. Crime in the United States 2001, supra, at Table 2.13, Murder Circumstances.

42. Id.

43. Informant: Lobato Boasted; Inmate Kept log of her conversations with murder suspect, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 11, 2002, (“She was boasting about it.”).

44. Id.

45. Cut Result of Attack, Teen Says, Peter O’Connell, Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 25, 2001.

46. Reasonable Doubt – Part 4, 10-13-2003, http://www.justice4Kirstin.com/rd4.html

47. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 21 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

48. Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

49. Reasonable Doubt – Part 4, supra.

50. Id.

51. Id.

52. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 28 quote in note 7 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

53. See e.g., Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 ¶ 23-24 (Nev. 09/03/2004); see also, Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

54. Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

55. The NV State Board of Nursing’s website has an online lookup function. Martin was a certified nursing assistant whose certification lapsed/expired on 9/21/2001. See, http://www.nursingboard.state.nv.us/ (last visited November 4, 2004).

56. Nevada Department of Corrections, April 3, 2004, at, http://www.flpba.org/private/nevada.htm

57. Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

58. Reasonable Doubt - Part 6, supra.

59. Id.

60. Id.

61. Reasonable Doubt - Part 8, 11-6-2003, http://www.justice4Kirstin.com/rd8.html

62. See the AFDAA website at, http://www.afdaa.org/index.html (last visited November 4, 2004).

63. Reasonable Doubt - Part 3, supra.

64. Id..

65. Id. (not allowed at trial)

66. Id. (not allowed at trial)

67. See e.g., Expert’s Testimony Limited, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 17, 2002.

68. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 16 <http://www.versuslaw.com> (Time of death was 10 to 18 hours prior to discovery of Bailey’s body at 10:30pm on July 8th)

69. Las Vegas, NV data from the Miami Herald website, http://weather1.herald.com/auto/miamiherald/history/airport/KLAS/2001/7/8/DailyHistory.html (last visited October 29, 2004)

70. Reasonable Doubt - Part 3, supra.

71. Id.

72. Id.

73. Id.

74. Expert’s Testimony Limited, supra (emphasis added)

75. Jurors Deliberate Severed Penis Slaying, Glenn Puit, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 17, 2002.

76. Id..

77. Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

78. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶¶ 38, 40 <http://www.versuslaw.com>; see also, Convicted Killer Turned Down Plea Deal, supra.

79. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 38 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

80. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 38 <http://www.versuslaw.com> (“the extrinsic evidence from the experts and Brenda Self would have supported a very important inference that Martin’s cooperation was simply part of a continuum of deceptions taken to secure her freedom. We conclude that the extrinsic evidence concerning the letters demonstrated her strong interest in assisting the State in Lobato’s trial.”)

81. Lobato v. State, 96 P.3d 765 (Nev. 09/03/2004); 2004.NV.0000064 ¶ 44 <http://www.versuslaw.com>

82. Reasonable Doubt - Part 6, supra.

83. Id. The broad cross-section of knowledgeable people who hold this opinion is indicated by a conversation the author had with a medical professional in November 2004, who said she had no knowledge of a single instance of a woman sexually mutilating a dead man’s body.

84. Cut Result of Attack, Teen Says, supra..

85. Id.