On January 3, 2018, Kirstin Blaise Lobato was released from prison after serving nearly 16 years for a murder she didn't commit.
The County District Attorney's Office dropped all charges against Lobato for the 2001 murder of Duran Bailey after a court overturned her conviction.
On December 19, 2017, Judge Stefany Miley of Clark County District Court overturned Lobato's murder conviction.
How It All Began
Lobato was only 18 years old when she was charged with the 2001 murder of Duran Bailey, a homeless man in Las Vegas.
She was tried for the crime twice and she maintained her innocence.
Bailey’s body had been found at around 10 p.m. on July 8, 2001, next to a dumpster in the parking lot of a bank building.
He had been brutalized: his eyes were swollen shut; his skull cracked; several of his teeth had been knocked out of his mouth; his carotid artery was cut; and his penis had been removed.
How Lobato Got Involved
Lobato grew up in Panaca, Nevada, a small town three hours north of Las Vegas.
In late May 2001, two months before Bailey was killed, Lobato was visiting friends in Las Vegas when a man tried to rape her in a motel parking lot.
Armed with a small knife which her father gave her for protection, Lobato cut the man near his pen#s and managed to break free from his grip.
As she drove away, she saw the man on the ground, moving and apparently crying.
In the days and weeks that followed, Lobato told many people about the attack
She mentioned she might have cut the man near his pe#nis before fleeing to safety.
Lobato’s attack was in May and Bailey's body was found two months later in July 2001.
Because both incidents involved a victim being cut in a private part, some people believed Lobato might be linked to Bailey's murder.
On July 20, 2001, about two weeks after Bailey's murder, detectives from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department received a call from a resident of Panaca.
This resident had heard from another person in Panaca that Lobato had mentioned cutting off a man's penis in Las Vegas.
Based solely on that resident's story, detectives promptly drove three hours from Las Vegas to Panaca.
When they arrived at Lobato's family home, they informed her that they were aware she had recently been assaulted.
The police recorded a statement from Lobato where she recounted the attempted rape occurring in late May,
She repeatedly told detectives that the incident happened "at least a month ago."
She described the location where she was attacked as a motel parking lot, not a dumpster.
She also said the man who tried to attack her was still moving and alive when she left, and he was not beaten to death like Bailey was
Thinking the police were telling her the man who attacked her had died, Lobato expressed regret and made other remarks that the detective interpreted as a confession to Bailey's murder.
However, the attack Lobato described didn't match the basic details of Bailey's killing.
Armed only with this statement, the detectives arrested Lobato for Bailey’s murder.
The police didn't investigate other possible suspects who had both the reason and ability to commit such a violent crime against Bailey.
A week before his body was discovered, on July 1, 2001, Bailey assaulted and raped a woman who lived in an apartment next to the bank where he would later be found dead.
Bailey threatened to kill the woman if she told anyone, but she eventually reported the attack to the police on July 5, 2001, just three days before Bailey was killed.
She also told several male neighbors who had various disagreement with Bailey about the assault.
Even though the woman had interacted with the victim before and her male friends had a reason to seek revenge on Bailey, the police quickly ruled out these potential suspects.
Instead, the police focused only on Lobato, a teenager who had no ties to Bailey and no reason to harm him.
Court Proceedings
During the trial, the prosecution mainly used Lobato's statement to the detectives, which they labeled as a confession since there was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Lobato to the crime.
The defense presented numerous family members and neighbors who testified that Lobato was actually in Panaca on July 8, 2001.
During their closing argument, the prosecution admitted that Lobato was in Panaca as of 11:30 a.m. on July 8th.
However, the prosecution used the medical examiner’s estimated time of death to challenge Lobato’s alibi.
According to the examiner, Bailey died possibly as early as 4 a.m. on July 8th, up to 24 hours before he was officially pronounced dead at 3:50 a.m. on July 9th.
The State argued that this placed Bailey's death at a time when Lobato couldn't be accounted for by her alibi witnesses.
This led to her conviction by the jury.
At the October 2017 hearing, Lobato presented testimony from three insect scientists known as forensic entomologists.
They all agreed that considering the weather in Las Vegas on July 8, 2001, and the outdoor location where Bailey’s body was found, blowflies would have laid eggs on his body shortly after death.
Blowflies typically lay hundreds of eggs in openings and wounds soon after someone dies.
Since Bailey’s body had no blowfly eggs, each entomologist independently concluded that he must have died shortly before he was found around 10 p.m. on July 8th.
During this time, as even the prosecution admitted, Lobato was three hours away in Panaca with her family.
Because of this strong scientific evidence, which could have been shown during Lobato's trial and probably changed the jury's decision, a Judge canceled her convictions.
On December 19, 2017, Judge Stefany Miley of Clark County District Court overturned Lobato's murder conviction and she was free.
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