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LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Nevada state attorney general wants a federal appeals court to reconsider and rescind a ruling granting another look at the case of a Las Vegas socialite dubbed the "black widow" in the 1995 death of her millionaire husband.
A three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel got it right last September when it said Margaret Rudin waited too long to appeal her 2001 conviction in the slaying of real estate businessman Ron Rudin, state Attorney General Adam Laxalt said.
But the three-judge panel got it wrong in a 2-1 ruling March 10 that ordered a federal judge to re-hear Rudin's bid for a new trial, he believes.
Rudin, 71, is serving 20 years to life in state prison. Her attorney, Christopher Oram, declined Monday to comment. He argued in court documents that a technicality shouldn't deny Rudin a chance to argue for a new trial on grounds that her trial and initial appeals lawyers botched her case.
Laxalt pointed in documents filed March 23 to various positions taken in appeal rulings and dissents.
"The mere fact that this case has resulted in five separate and published main, concurring and dissenting opinions in only six months should raise eyebrows," Senior Deputy Attorney General Jamie Resch said in the 17-page request for a hearing by the entire 27-member circuit court.
The fight over the appeal continues a 21-year legal saga centered around Rudin's 10-week trial. It drew gavel-to-gavel television coverage and featured plot twists, an apparent lack of preparation by her defense attorney, the appointment of two other defense attorneys to help him, and calls for a mistrial.
Prosecutors said Ron Rudin, 64, a prominent Las Vegas real estate developer, was shot as he slept in December 1994. His body was hauled to the desert and burned. His skull and some charred bones were found in January 1995, about 45 miles from Las Vegas.
Margaret Rudin, an antiques dealer, tried to obtain part of her husband's $11 million fortune before disappearing after she was indicted in 1997. An "America's Most Wanted" viewer identified Rudin in November 1999 living with a retired firefighter in Revere, Massachusetts.
The jury in Las Vegas found her guilty.
At sentencing, Clark County District Court Judge Joseph Bonaventure wrote off the drama as an attempt by a woman who became a fugitive to try to escape responsibility for her husband's death.
The federal appeals panel said a lawyer appointed to handle Rudin's appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court abandoned the effort amid confusion about whether a brief had been filed in time. It hadn't.
Rudin was granted a new trial in 2008 by a state court judge, but that decision was overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court.
The federal appeals panel on March 10 faulted Rudin's trial lawyer for professional misconduct, and said the state high court "acknowledged that Rudin's trial was plagued not only with inadequacies on the part of defense counsel, but also with prosecutorial misconduct and legal error on the part of the state and court."
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