Margaret Rudin

Early life

Margaret Lee Frost was born in Memphis, Tennessee, one of three daughters. The family moved frequently and she had lived in 15 states before graduating from high school. She had been married four times before meeting Ronald Rudin at the First Church of Religious Science in Las Vegas. They married on September 11, 1987.

Appeal

In 2002, the Nevada Supreme Court denied Margaret Rudin's appeal finding she was not denied effective assistance of counsel. As of 2008, no record of federal collateral review could be found.

In 2008, Rudin was given a new trial. Clark County District Judge Sally Loehrer ruled that lawyers for Margaret Rudin, then 65 years old, were not prepared to defend her at her 2001 trial, according to lawyers on both sides of the case. She also ruled that Rudin's lead attorney at the time, Michael Amador, was not effective, according to Christopher Oram, Rudin's new attorney.

KLTV-8 News reported on 10 May 2010, that the Nevada Supreme Court ruled against convicted Rudin and ruled she would not get another trial. The lower Appeals Court's ruling was overturned and the original conviction stood.

On April 26, 2011, the Las Vegas Sun reported that Margaret Rudin had filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking a new trial and reversal of her conviction based on ineffective assistance of trial counsel, impermissible hearsay testimony, faulty jury instructions and other points.

On January 25, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Roger L. Hunt dismissed Margaret Rudin’s federal habeas corpus case with prejudice. In a nine-page decision, Judge Hunt found that Rudin’s federal petition was not filed in a timely manner. The ruling paves the way for an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

On September 10, 2014, in a split decision by three-judge panel, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's order dismissing Rudin’s federal habeas corpus case despite what it acknowledged to be serious issues with her representation and prosecution, both pre- and post-conviction. The Court deemed that it was compelled to deny her petition, while at the same time acknowledging that it was "troubled" by the case. Excerpts from the Opinion's Conclusion:

We are troubled by the outcome of this case for many reasons. Margaret Rudin's direct appeal and collateral review proceedings have been pending in either state or federal court for a combined total of 13 years. She has potentially meritorious claims that she has suffered prejudice at the hands of her own attorneys' egregious misconduct. Yet she has never had an opportunity to present those claims in court.

Rudin’s defense counsel, Amador, indisputably engaged in egregious professional misconduct during the course of her underlying criminal trial. On direct appeal of her judgment of conviction, the Nevada Supreme 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 the court. Although two members of the Nevada Supreme Court found the record sufficiently clear as to the “inherent prejudice created by [trial counsel]” to require immediate reversal of Rudin’s judgment of conviction, a majority of the court declined to address the effect of those errors, finding them more appropriate for resolution on collateral review.

[A]t this point, Rudin is still in prison, having served 13 years of her life sentence for murder. We know from the state post-conviction court that the State’s “proof of guilt [at that trial] was not a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination.” We also know from the post-conviction court that, had Rudin been represented by competent counsel, the jury’s verdict may have been different. Thus, what we do not know is whether Rudin is lawfully imprisoned. And, regrettably, that is something we may never know.