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NORWICH – Ganesh 'Remy' Ramsaran – the man who was convicted of second-degree murder of his wife, Jennifer, back on Dec. 1, 2014 – saw his conviction reversed on Thursday after an appeal decision handed down by the Supreme Court, Appellate Division: Third Judicial Department.
Jennifer Ramsaran, the defendant's wife and the victim in the case, went missing on Dec. 11, 2012. She was last seen at her home in New Berlin that morning. The defendant reported her missing around 8 p.m. that evening after she failed to report home from a shopping trip in Syracuse.
An extensive search followed, and Jennifer's body was finally discovered down an embankment adjacent to Center Road in the Town of Pharsalia on Feb. 26, 2013. It was determined that the victim had been killed by unnatural causes some months prior, although an official cause of death was never determined.
Ramsaran was arrested for the murder of Jennifer on May 17, 2013. On May 24, 2013, he was indicted by a Chenango County grand jury on one count of second degree murder, a class A-1 felony, in connection with the alleged crime.
After a trial lasting just under three weeks, Ramsaran was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to serve a term of 25 years to life in prison.
During the trial, Ramsaran was represented by defense attorney Gilberto Garcia. In their decision to reverse the conviction, the Appellate Court did “find merit to (the) defendant's contention that certain errors rendered defense council ineffective, thereby depriving (the) defendant of a fair trial.”
Chenango County District Attorney Joseph McBride's comments about the DNA evidence in the case during his closing arguments were a main focus of the Appellate Court's decision.
“We agree with (the) defendant that defense counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's inappropriate characterization of the DNA testimony and evidence during summation requires reversal,” a copy of the decision stated.
“While we find that defense counsel's failure to object to the prosecutor's inaccurate and misleading description of the DNA testimony and evidence is sufficient, by itself, to have deprived defendant of a fair trial, we also note that other trail errors by defense counsel, when taken as a whole, lend additional support to defendant's contention that he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel,” the decision depicted.
“We are exploring our options," McBride said with regard to the next action his office will be taking. Those options include filing with the court of appeals to possibly reverse the decision.
"I respectfully disagree with some of the conclusions in the decision that I've read,” he added. “I've talked to the family and informed them of what is going on. We are deciding whether to take the decision to a higher court.”
McBride also said he believes his summation was supported by the record, and that he was not misleading the jury when describing the DNA evidence in question (analysis of a blood stain on the sweatshirt that the defendant was allegedly wearing the morning that the victim disappeared).
As the decision states: “A forensic expert concluded testified that it was 1.661 quadrillion times more likely that the blood sample from the sweatshirt contained a combination of (the) defendant's blood and the victim's blood than if two randomly selected individuals were the donors.”
Although his murder conviction has been overturned, Ramsaran still faces the prospect of 5 to 15 years in prison, admitting his guilt to a bribery charge in Dec., 2015. The bribery charge, a class C felony, alleged that, while being held in the Chenango County Correctional Facility, Ramsaran offered Mark Chesebro, a Chenango County Corrections Officer, $100,000 to help him escape from the jail in Nov., 2014. That sentence was to run concurrent with Ramsaran's previous murder conviction.