Charles Ng appeal denied!
7.28.2022
Serial killer Charles Ng loses appeal of death sentence
Serial killer Charles Ng, who was captured in Calgary in 1985 after a North America-wide manhunt, has lost his bid to overturn the death sentence he received for killing 11 people in California in the mid-1980s.
The California Supreme Court dismissed Ng’s arguments that his rights were violated and upheld the ruling of the trial judge.
“We affirm the judgment in its entirety,” Justice Joshua Groban stated in a 181-page decision released Thursday.
Groban, writing the unanimous decision of the seven-member court, noted that Ng raised several challenges to California’s death penalty law “that we considered and rejected.”
He said the panel found two trial errors but determined that they didn’t prejudice the outcome of the case.
Ng, now 61, was sentenced to death June 30, 1999 for his role in slaying six men, three women and two babies in the Sierra Nevada foothills after one of the longest and most costly trials in U.S. history.
Court proceedings began in Canada in July 1985 after Ng was arrested for shoplifting at The Bay department store in Calgary during the western Canadian city’s annual Stampede celebrations.
Ng fought extradition to the United States for six years before Canada’s Supreme Court ordered that he could be extradited without assurances he wouldn’t face the death penalty. Canada officially abolished capital punishment in 1976 but ceased executions in December 1962.
Ng has been held on Death Row in San Quentin prison for 22 years, but the likelihood of him being executed is slim. The State of California has instituted a moratorium on executions and the death chamber has been dismantled.
During his trial, the defence argued that the Hong Kong-born Ng was the unwitting stooge of his psychopathic partner Leonard Lake, who launched a series of killings and sex crimes before the pair met in the early 1980s. Lake died in 1985 after ingesting cyanide while in police custody while Ng fled to Canada.
Together, Ng and Lake are believed to have murdered as many as 25 people, including relatives, neighbours, friends, work colleagues and strangers who had material possessions the pair coveted.
The victims included two families: Harvey, Deborah and infant Sean Dubs and Lonnie Bond, Brenda O’Connor and infant Lonnie Bond Jr. The women were held captive as sex slaves in a secret chamber of a concrete bunker.
The U.S. case was unique in light of the involvement of a Canadian Mountie and an Alberta convict who compiled the key evidence – much of it in the form of sketches by Ng’s own hand – that convinced the jury he played a key role in the deaths of 11 of the 12 people he was charged with killing.
Ng – pronounced ENG – was acquitted of participating in the murder of Paul Cosner, who disappeared after taking strangers for a test drive in a copper-coloured Honda Prelude he was selling.
Although it appeared Cosner was shot from behind while sitting in the passenger seat of his car, the jury didn’t believe the prosecution proved Ng had been the shooter.
Edmonton RCMP S.Sgt. Ray Munro was seconded to the state of California and assembled much of the case for the U.S. task force assigned to gather the evidence to convict Ng. A wily inmate named Maurice Laberge, who was serving a sentence for robbery at the Edmonton Maximum Security Institution when Ng arrived, befriended the accused killer and compiled detailed information about his crimes.
Ng’s lawyer, Eric Multhaup, argued before the Supreme Court that his client was deprived of due process, a fair trial and his constitutional rights by the refusal of the Orange County Superior Court to transfer six homicide charges to San Francisco where the victims resided.
The trial was held in Orange County which Ng claimed had a much smaller Asian-American population from which to select a more representative jury. He argued the decision to hold the trial in Orange County made it more likely that he would be sentenced to death.
But the Supreme Court ruled the defendant didn’t have a right to select where the trial would take place and San Francisco was not an option because of pre-trial publicity and logistical issues.
Ng claimed 20 violations of his constitutional rights, including the fact that he was required to wear a stun belt in court. He argued that wearing a device that could zap him with 50,000 volts of electricity hampered his ability to present a defence to the charges.
But the Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge and court officers had valid reasons for the security measures taken.
“The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it ordered the defendant to wear the stun belt,” Justice Groban wrote. “We need not parse every reason relied on by the prosecutor and the trial judge to justify restraints because there is enough evidence in the record to support the court’s finding of a manifest need for restraints.”
He wrote there was “ample evidence” that the defendant had a history of escape and attempted escape.
Ng’s lawyer argued the trial court’s decision to revoke his right to represent himself in court deprived Ng of due process. He also claimed Ng was deprived of a fair trial as a result of “pervasive judicial bias” against him.
The Supreme Court disagreed, saying the defendant’s claims “lacked merit.” Justice Groban wrote that Ng was clearly trying to delay the proceedings, noting that he filed 37 motions to fire his lawyers.
“He fails to demonstrate the presence of misconduct or bias, let alone that any judicial misconduct or bias was so prejudicial that it deprived (the) defendant of a fair as opposed to perfect trial.”
Ng complained about the exclusion of Leonard Lake’s diary as evidence at his trial as well as the exclusion of a video in which Lake and his ex-wife discussed his plan to capture women to be used as sex slaves.
The Supreme Court said they didn’t believe it affected the outcome of the trial given all the other evidence against him, including Ng’s own testimony, videotape of him shackling and stripping their victims, the drawings and the physical evidence found at the Wilseyville cabin where many of the murders were committed.
Ng argued that his rights were also violated when the court accepted evidence from prison informant Laberge who testified in court procedures in a “foreign country,” but the Supreme Court said Laberge’s testimony was challenged by Ng’s lawyer in Canada and there was no evidence that Canadian extradition proceedings were “so unconventional as to violate American standards of fairness and reliability.”
Laberge died in a car crash before Ng’s trial and his previous testimony at Ng’s extradition hearing in Canada was read into the California court record by RCMP S.Sgt. Munro.
Serial killer Charles Ng loses appeal of death sentence
Serial killer Charles Ng, who was captured in Calgary in 1985 after a North America-wide manhunt, has lost his bid to overturn the death sentence he received for killing 11 people in California in the mid-1980s.
The California Supreme Court dismissed Ng’s arguments that his rights were violated and upheld the ruling of the trial judge.
“We affirm the judgment in its entirety,” Justice Joshua Groban stated in a 181-page decision released Thursday.
Groban, writing the unanimous decision of the seven-member court, noted that Ng raised several challenges to California’s death penalty law “that we considered and rejected.”
He said the panel found two trial errors but determined that they didn’t prejudice the outcome of the case.
Ng, now 61, was sentenced to death June 30, 1999 for his role in slaying six men, three women and two babies in the Sierra Nevada foothills after one of the longest and most costly trials in U.S. history.
Court proceedings began in Canada in July 1985 after Ng was arrested for shoplifting at The Bay department store in Calgary during the western Canadian city’s annual Stampede celebrations.
Ng fought extradition to the United States for six years before Canada’s Supreme Court ordered that he could be extradited without assurances he wouldn’t face the death penalty. Canada officially abolished capital punishment in 1976 but ceased executions in December 1962.
Ng has been held on Death Row in San Quentin prison for 22 years, but the likelihood of him being executed is slim. The State of California has instituted a moratorium on executions and the death chamber has been dismantled.
During his trial, the defence argued that the Hong Kong-born Ng was the unwitting stooge of his psychopathic partner Leonard Lake, who launched a series of killings and sex crimes before the pair met in the early 1980s. Lake died in 1985 after ingesting cyanide while in police custody while Ng fled to Canada.
Together, Ng and Lake are believed to have murdered as many as 25 people, including relatives, neighbours, friends, work colleagues and strangers who had material possessions the pair coveted.
The victims included two families: Harvey, Deborah and infant Sean Dubs and Lonnie Bond, Brenda O’Connor and infant Lonnie Bond Jr. The women were held captive as sex slaves in a secret chamber of a concrete bunker.
The U.S. case was unique in light of the involvement of a Canadian Mountie and an Alberta convict who compiled the key evidence – much of it in the form of sketches by Ng’s own hand – that convinced the jury he played a key role in the deaths of 11 of the 12 people he was charged with killing.
Ng – pronounced ENG – was acquitted of participating in the murder of Paul Cosner, who disappeared after taking strangers for a test drive in a copper-coloured Honda Prelude he was selling.
Although it appeared Cosner was shot from behind while sitting in the passenger seat of his car, the jury didn’t believe the prosecution proved Ng had been the shooter.
Edmonton RCMP S.Sgt. Ray Munro was seconded to the state of California and assembled much of the case for the U.S. task force assigned to gather the evidence to convict Ng. A wily inmate named Maurice Laberge, who was serving a sentence for robbery at the Edmonton Maximum Security Institution when Ng arrived, befriended the accused killer and compiled detailed information about his crimes.
Ng’s lawyer, Eric Multhaup, argued before the Supreme Court that his client was deprived of due process, a fair trial and his constitutional rights by the refusal of the Orange County Superior Court to transfer six homicide charges to San Francisco where the victims resided.
The trial was held in Orange County which Ng claimed had a much smaller Asian-American population from which to select a more representative jury. He argued the decision to hold the trial in Orange County made it more likely that he would be sentenced to death.
But the Supreme Court ruled the defendant didn’t have a right to select where the trial would take place and San Francisco was not an option because of pre-trial publicity and logistical issues.
Ng claimed 20 violations of his constitutional rights, including the fact that he was required to wear a stun belt in court. He argued that wearing a device that could zap him with 50,000 volts of electricity hampered his ability to present a defence to the charges.
But the Supreme Court ruled that the trial judge and court officers had valid reasons for the security measures taken.
“The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it ordered the defendant to wear the stun belt,” Justice Groban wrote. “We need not parse every reason relied on by the prosecutor and the trial judge to justify restraints because there is enough evidence in the record to support the court’s finding of a manifest need for restraints.”
He wrote there was “ample evidence” that the defendant had a history of escape and attempted escape.
Ng’s lawyer argued the trial court’s decision to revoke his right to represent himself in court deprived Ng of due process. He also claimed Ng was deprived of a fair trial as a result of “pervasive judicial bias” against him.
The Supreme Court disagreed, saying the defendant’s claims “lacked merit.” Justice Groban wrote that Ng was clearly trying to delay the proceedings, noting that he filed 37 motions to fire his lawyers.
“He fails to demonstrate the presence of misconduct or bias, let alone that any judicial misconduct or bias was so prejudicial that it deprived (the) defendant of a fair as opposed to perfect trial.”
Ng complained about the exclusion of Leonard Lake’s diary as evidence at his trial as well as the exclusion of a video in which Lake and his ex-wife discussed his plan to capture women to be used as sex slaves.
The Supreme Court said they didn’t believe it affected the outcome of the trial given all the other evidence against him, including Ng’s own testimony, videotape of him shackling and stripping their victims, the drawings and the physical evidence found at the Wilseyville cabin where many of the murders were committed.
Ng argued that his rights were also violated when the court accepted evidence from prison informant Laberge who testified in court procedures in a “foreign country,” but the Supreme Court said Laberge’s testimony was challenged by Ng’s lawyer in Canada and there was no evidence that Canadian extradition proceedings were “so unconventional as to violate American standards of fairness and reliability.”
Laberge died in a car crash before Ng’s trial and his previous testimony at Ng’s extradition hearing in Canada was read into the California court record by RCMP S.Sgt. Munro.
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