Court to hear Margaret Rudin’s motion for new trial
Margaret Rudin, who was convicted of killing her millionaire husband in one of Las Vegas’ most celebrated trials, should have her motion for a new trial heard, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.
Rudin is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in the women’s prison in North Las Vegas for killing her fifth husband, Ron Rudin, in 1994. He was shot in the head while he slept. In his will, he left instructions for extra investigation if he died in a violent manner.
Christopher Oram, Rudin’s attorney for nearly a decade, said prosecutors have been playing legal games since 2008.
“I believe in her innocence,” Oram said Tuesday. “I’m ready to fight, and I wish they would stop playing their games. In the end, get in the ring and fight.”
Patty Cafferata, a spokeswoman for the Nevada attorney general’s office, said prosecutors expect to make a decision on the ruling in two or three days.
“We are in the process of evaluating all of our options,” she said.
Rudin has maintained her innocence. In 2008, county District Judge Sally Loehrer ordered a new trial on the grounds Rudin was denied effective counsel by her lawyer, Michael Amador, but the state Supreme Court overturned that ruling.
Ron Rudin, a real estate developer, left an estate worth $11 million, which Margaret Rudin was in line to inherit.
She fled Las Vegas after she came under suspicion but was caught in Massachusetts in 1999. Her 2001 trial was telecast on Court TV, and she was the subject of a book.
From the onset of Rudin’s case, there have been questions about her lawyers. Even Tom Pitaro, appointed to assist Amador just after opening statements at trial, called Amador’s representation a “a sham, a farce and a mockery.”
In 2004, the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Rudin’s conviction, despite pointing to concerns about Amador. His conflict of interest and ineffectiveness were to be addressed in post-conviction proceedings, the state high court ruled.
Tuesday’s 2-1 panel decision, in which Judge Mary Murguia reversed her stance from a September order, stems from a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling that Rudin, now 71, did not appeal her conviction in time.
In 2007, Oram filed “the first and only petition for post-conviction relief,” Murguia wrote.
The appeals court found that one of Rudin’s former lawyers, Dayvid Figler, essentially abandoned her in the two years he was assigned to the case. In 2005, when Rudin asked for copies of her file, “Figler did not immediately respond,” according to the appeals court decision.
Rudin said Figler only visited her four times that year, and the following year she was unable to contact him from prison because he had blocked collect calls to his office.
“While Figler regularly attended the court’s status hearings, he appears to have done nothing else in support of his client’s request for post-conviction relief,” Murguia wrote. Figler had the case for 645 days “and during that time, Figler had filed nothing in either state or federal court.”
Figler called Rudin’s appeal a “very complicated, burdensome, voluminous case” and said that after he took it on, the trial judge granted him extra time because the case was so complex.
He said he had “no knowledge of her phone calls being blocked” and visited Rudin “at least four times” in prison.
Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Find her on Twitter: @CarriGeer
