Sides make final arguments in Hagins -- jury deliberations begin on Tuesday

Attorneys delivered their closing arguments Friday in the Yuba County Superior Court matter of People v. Marcus Charles Hagins, in which a 19-year-old Elverta man is accused of attempted armed rape, burglary and related violations in a May 15, 2009 intrusion into a Plumas Lake home.

Hagins was prosecuted for allegedly sneaking into the Dark Horse Way home of a girl he knew at 4 a.m. and, surprising her in her sleep.

Disguised in a "hoodie" and mask, he allegedly gagged and trussed the girl up with duct tape and tried to insert a ball gag into her mouth – all actions and tools associated with “BDSM.” He also allegedly threatened her with a knife.

Informed sources describe “BDSM” as a type of role playing between individuals who derive feelings of pain and power and create sexual tension, pleasure, and release from the experience. Read more »

Hagins prosecution rests; defense silent

The prosecution rested its case Thursday and the defense took the rare move of presenting no evidence in its favor in the strange case of People v. Marcus Charles Hagins, CRF-09-283.

Yuba County Superior Court Judge Kathleen R. O’Connor ordered the jury to return at 1 p.m. today to hear closing arguments by both sides.

The parties huddled for the rest of the rest of the day with O’Connor working out an agreement on what instructions, exactly, the jury will be given for its deliberations.

Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Dupré-Tokos finished her questioning of Detective Kevin Conde, a high tech expert with the Marysville Police Department and consultant with other law enforcement agencies who had reviewed the files saved on Hagins’ personal laptop.

The laptop had been confiscated in the investigation and examined for hours by Conde working out where in the laptop’s several operators had gone and what they had looked at.

Conde testified that it was clear to him that Hagins was far and away the main user of the laptop and that he had downloaded a mountain of bondage pornographer while cruising around the Internet.

The suspect’s pattern of usage indicated he had accessed porno sites on a regular and frequent basis and saved them under a site designated as “Paintball,” Conde testified.

Conde testified that in his analysis of the laptop’s usage he had download some 8,000 images – “graphics,” as Conde called them – both still photos and live action videos from .jpeg, just one of the half dozen or so graphics sites he seemed to have visited pretty much on a daily basis.Read more »

Something new to show the jury

Will this be the next courtroom exhibit?

Der Spiegel: He bears a passing resemblance to the Grim Reaper, the dead are his business and the media even calls him "Doctor Death." His Body Worlds exhibition of human bodies and animals -- preserved and displayed in often bizarre poses in a method he invented and calls plastination -- has been seen by over 30 million people around the world.

But this week, Gunther von Hagens, 65, will be attracting attention at home in Germany, where he is set on Friday to reopen a plastination facility and exhibition in the town of Guben in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. More controversially, von Hagens' Plastinarium will also be selling some of Dr. Death's work in what German tabloids have dubbed a "supermarket for bodyparts" and a "cabinet of horrors."

Like some macabre charcuterie, von Hagens' "Plastinat Shop" will feature transparent silicon "slices" of everything from humans to ducks to giraffes and crocodiles. The price tag on a slice of a human head is a lofty €1,500 ($1,838), and a cross-section down the length of a human body is even dearer -- going for 10 times that. He is also expected to open up an online shop for those with no time to travel to a remote eastern German town in search of body art. For the squeamish, full-sized color photos are available.

A case to follow, if only for its entertainment value

British police are still searching for the bodies of three women that self-identified ’crossbow cannibal’ is charged with killing.

But how can they expect to find the corpses when the alleged killer may have eaten them?

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Hagins trial continues into 2nd week

Yuba County Sheriff’s Sergeant Joseph Pomeroy, lead investigator, finished testifying Tuesday in the trial of Marcus Charles Hagins 19, accused sneaking into a Plumas Lake home and attacking a sleeping girl.

His testimony ended under pointed questioning by defense attorney Michael Bowman clearly aimed at suggesting to the jury of nine women and three men that investigators sought to trap the youthful Hagins into unintentionally making statements that could be interpreted as incriminating. Read more »

2 days of testimony in Hagins trial

Testimony last week by the victim of an alleged sexually-motivated attack helped clarify what reportedly happened in a Plumas Lake home May 15, 2009 and how Yuba County sheriff’s investigators so quickly focused on Marcus Charles Hagins as their key suspect.

Yuba County Sheriff’s Sergeant Joseph Pomeroy, lead investigator in the crime, said the 20-year-old victim named Hagins as one of two persons she knew who were tall and thin as the attacker had been.

The other person, whose last name was not known, could not me located, so Hagins’ became the immediate focus of the investigation.

Evidence began to pile up. Read more »