Trial For Potential Hate Crime Murder Of Luis Ramirez Begins

The trial of two of the alleged murderers of Pennsylvania resident and illegal immigrant Luis Ramirez–one in a rash of Latino immigrant murders last year–is now underway and raising all sorts of unpleasant questions about both sides.

The known facts are:

• Four white teenagers got in a fight with Ramirez, a 25 year-old factory worker and farmhand from Iramuco, Mexico, in July of 2008 
• Ramirez died from his injuries thirty hours after the teens left him unconscious. 

Beyond that, accounts vary wildly with some portraying the slaying as a hate-crime against a defenseless man while others say Ramirez was the aggressor who started the fight.

Brandon Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19, are the two defendants now on trial for murder. Their lawyers are denying that the attack was a hate crime and say, instead, that Ramirez was the aggressor. Here’s the defense’s version of what happened after the four teens found Ramirez’s alleged girlfriend in a park at night,

At that point Ramirez emerged from the shadows “and goes nuts.” Ramirez “was not going to let these white teenage boys talk that way to his girlfriend” and told them, “I run this park. I own this block.”

The defense also says that Ramirez was not alone for the whole fight. After the initial scuffle, the teens say they backed off but Ramirez called some friends to back him up. They also say that at some point Ramirez’s friends pointed a gun at them, and a gun was found near the scene of the fight.

To complicate matters, the “alleged girlfriend” is the 15 year old half-sister of Ramirez’s fiancee and mother of his two kids, Crystal Dillman. The younger half-sister confirmed in court that she did have a sexual relationship with Ramirez. Eeesh.

The prosecution did not comment on the young girl’s statement but reiterated that the slaying was a racially-motivated hate crime. Prosecuting Assistant District Attorney Robert Franz told the court,

“They told him to go back to Mexico. They told him, ‘This is Shenandoah. You don’t belong here.’ “

Given this mind-boggling video where a local Shenandoah woman argues this wouldn’t have happened if Ramirez hadn’t been there in the first place, we’re going to guess ethnicity had at least something to do with the fight:

There’s also something fishy about handling of this case. Four young men were involved in the fight but only two of them have been charged. The two others, Colin Walsh and Brian Scully, are not involved in this trial. Walsh pled to violating Ramirez’s civil rights in exchange for all charges against him being dropped and Scully is being charged as a minor.

Before he pled guilty, Walsh apparently pushed for separate trials because he feared the four of them would be forced to testify against one another. The county President Judge William Baldwin rejected that request, which is perhaps why Walsh agreed to plead guilty instead and bow out of the trial.

What do you think? Has this case been handled correctly so far?

Trial begins for 2 Pa. teens in Mexican’s death [AP]
Photo Credit: ABC
Accounts differ over fatal beating of immigrant [Morning Call]
Trial date set in Hispanic man’s beating death in Shenandoah [Morning Call]