Bakersfield Murder Trial - Acquitted at Trial on Murder Charges

Based in Reno, Nevada, William Routsis is a criminal defense attorney who is licensed to practice in Nevada and California. William Routsis works in all courts in the State of Nevada and travels throughout Lake Tahoe and Northern California defending his clients. William Routsis has extensive trial experience and negotiating successes in homicide cases and all violent crime, domestic violence, driving under the influence and drug crime cases, he possesses over 25 years as an experienced and respected trial lawyer from the streets of Bakersfield to Lake Tahoe and throughout the state of Nevada. William Routsis holds a flawless record in homicide cases and has eight separate brutal and long homicide trials without a guilty verdict. Many of these clients were looking at potential life in prison sentences, truly compelling and unique results which are unheard and rather mythical in the legal community. For a defense attorney to have one acquittal in his life for a homicide case is a great achievement. One of the homicide cases Mr. Routsis has successfully handled to date is the defendant trial. (please see newspaper article which summarizes this extraordinary case) The case, which involved the death of a baby went to a long and brutal trial in the Bakersfield Superior Court. After weeks of heated and powerful testimony the Judge found that the defense so exposed the States case that in a unique and rarely done order, the Judge entered an decision of Not Guilty after the defense made a motion for acquittal upon resting the defense case before the jury. The judge found the defense case so compelling that his order by California law necessarily held that "no reasonable juror could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". During the heated trial in Bakersfield, Mr. Routsis leveraged expert testimony and to argue that the infant’s passing was not medically possible to have been the result of the defendants actions. The duration of time his client spent with the child was not reflective of how long it would take for the child to pass from an incident involving shaking due to a subdural hematoma. In fact the defense established who the perpetrator of this horrible crime truly was. Mr. Routsis was interviewed later by one of the Innocence projects in Northern California; as William Routsis was one of the only, if not the only, acquittal during a dark time in Bakersfield. At that time the prosecution in Bakersfield, California were repeatedly convicting people with a corrupt forensic pathologist on an incorrect understanding of "child shaking syndrome". The innocence project actually pulled some of William Routsis's cross examinations to attack other convictions based on medical testimony which was not accurate that was presented by the State in other convictions. William Routsis carries his passion for law into his community work, as well. He offers complimentary legal services for clients he believes would benefit from his expertise, but may not have the means to pay for proper representation.

Judge Clears father in baby's death case
Source: The Bakersfield Californian
Date: April 29, 1992