TECUMSEH — Prosecutors say investigators spent months poring over videos from at least six camera angles to tie Eric Ramos to the murder of a fellow inmate, Michael Galindo, last year during an uprising sparked by staff's discovery of 29 gallons of alcohol behind prison walls.
Galindo's attackers — the state says there were at least four — covered their faces and hands when they kicked, beat and stabbed him March 2, 2017, at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution.
Ramos, so far, is the only one charged with his murder.
Damage from a fire, and from fire extinguishers and water used to squelch it, wiped the crime scene, Cell No. 2A15, clean of any DNA evidence or fingerprints.
Public defender Timothy Nelsen said the investigation was “slanted from the beginning,” reaching a conclusion when a Department of Correctional Services captain suggested Ramos may have been involved but before anyone even looked at videos or tried to talk to witnesses.
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One prison staffer described what followed as sort of a game of "Where’s Waldo?", the children’s books with a man in a red-and-white stocking cap hidden on the page.
“That’s exactly what happened here,” Nelsen told the jury in opening statements Monday morning.
On the other side, Assistant Attorney General Corey O’Brien described a painstaking search for anything that could link Galindo to his killer or killers, an effort complicated by the sheer size of the crime scene, the damage to property, the number of people in the area during and after the killing and the fact that inmates had covered their faces.
He told the jury to expect extensive testimony on the challenges that the Nebraska State Patrol investigators faced.
Ultimately, they were unable to unearth physical evidence linking any inmate to the killing, he said. O’Brien said the most promising evidence came in the form of videos. But it’s not quite as simple as it seems, he said.
For one thing, the video isn’t the highest quality; it’s "a bit grainy," he said — taken from a distance in some cases, and from multiple views. He asked jurors to pay close attention to one in particular, which included a view of Ramos’ cell, No. 2B15.
O’Brien said one shows an inmate, whom two prison staff members will identify as Ramos, going to an outside mini-yard that connects the 2A and 2B galleries, shedding his clothes and tossing them into the fire.
In one video, the prosecutor said, “we get a pretty good view of his face.”
O’Brien said that person appeared not to be white or black, but to be Hispanic. Ramos was one of just 19 Hispanic men on that block at the time, he said.
Two prison staffers are expected to testify the bald man with a receding hairline was Ramos. He said the videos will allow jurors to determine for themselves if it is.
He pointed to distinctive wet spots on Ramos’s sweatshirt that made it easier to follow him from one video angle to the next.
Prosecutors pieced together a video series of an inmate, whom O’Brien says is Ramos, apparently gathering parts from an ice maker used to break out a cell window where Galindo was found dead and to make a torch with towels or clothing from the laundry.
“Through the course of this trial, the state expects you’ll hear extensive testimony about the challenges faced by the investigators trying to investigate Mr. Galindo’s death and their inability to unearth any forensic evidence that would link any inmate to the death of Mr. Galindo despite their considerable efforts,” O’Brien said.
However, he told jurors, they should eventually feel confident in Ramos' guilt.
Nelsen, the public defender, told them there were “huge gaps” in the videos and that staff accidentally destroyed some of the originals.
"What you’re not going to hear from the state is a motive,” he said.
Nelsen said Ramos, now on trial for first-degree murder and five other alleged felonies, was close to parole and looking forward to going home to California, and only had been in that cell block for about a month.
He encouraged jurors to look beyond the quantity of evidence — which will be massive, with the trial expected to last several weeks — and consider the quality of evidence, which Nelsen called “lacking.”
There is no forensic evidence, no DNA or fingerprints, Nelsen said: only a few inmates who have agreed to testify and prison staff who say they can identify Ramos on grainy videos by things such as his gait and wet spots on his prison-issued clothes.
He called what happened to Galindo that day a tragedy and said a "sloppy, shoddy” investigation followed. The state only tested five pieces of evidence, despite collecting more than 100; two guards said they saw inmates in blood-stained clothes, but the clothes weren’t seized or tested; and the fire suppression system that could have saved Galindo’s life failed that day.
This isn't a case about what happened, he said, but a whodunit.
And he suggested there would be other inmates who will testify that Ramos isn't the one in the videos and that he was with them, in another part of the gallery, when Galindo was killed.
“The fact is, Eric Ramos was a bystander,” Nelsen said.
Ramos faces a life sentence, plus 152 years, if the jury convicts him as charged.