Appeals court upholds conviction of Tucson man in rapes, murder

In a lengthy ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a series of claims by Robert Lee Walden Jr. that he was denied a fair trial. Among those claims is that the rape victims who were not killed were allowed to identify him in court and that gruesome photographs of his murder victim were shown to the jury.

And appellate Judge Sidney Thomas, writing for the three-judge panel, said there was nothing improper about having a single trial for all three offenses, all of which occurred in Tucson.

The offenses began in May 1991 when he forced a woman into an empty laundry room at knife point and repeatedly threatened to kill her, according to court records.

Less than two weeks later at a nearby apartment complex, he tricked another woman into allowing him into her apartment by claiming he was there to perform maintenance work.

Then a month later he raped and killed Miguela Burhans in the bedroom of her midtown apartment complex.

Walden, who lived within blocks of where two of the sexual assaults had occurred, was arrested in late June, with police finding fingerprint evidence and other indications that led to him. The two surviving women later identified him out of the same six-person lineup.

At trial, his attorney called seven witnesses to advance his claim that he had an alibi for each incident and that the two women, plus another who saw him near the dead woman’s apartment complex, must have misidentified him. And there also was an expert who testified about the fallibility of human perception and memory.

The jury took less than a day to convict him, with the Arizona Supreme Court upholding the finding and the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to review.

This new round of arguments in federal court brought up some of the same issues as well as some new legal claims, including that his trial counsel was ineffective.

Sidney said there was no error in having all three cases tried together.

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He pointed out that, even if there had been three separate trials, the rules of evidence would have allowed each jury to hear the details of all three cases given the similarity of each of the attacks.

As to the lineups where he was identified, Sidney said the Arizona Supreme Court already found that all of those from which the victims had to choose resembled each other and were similar in age, build, hair color and length.

At the time of the slaying, Walden was on probation for aggravated assault and kidnapping charges stemming from two separate attacks on women.

He also subsequently pleaded guilty to two other earlier murders which had not been solved.

In one, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the December 1990 beating death of Nola Jean Knight. Her nude body was found behind a convenience store in the 6400 block of North Oracle Road.

Walden also confessed to the February 1991 slaying of Denene Brevaire-Domet, whose severely beaten body was found lying in a pool of blood inside a midtown construction company office where she worked as a secretary.

Prosecutors had promised not to press charges in that case in exchange for Walden’s confession, saying they hoped it would comfort the victim’s family.