An ex-assistant Nevada attorney general who is charged with murder in Honolulu in 1972 told a Reno court on Wednesday that he intends to challenge his extradition because he feels his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained last week.
Tudor Chirila, 77, claimed that he was wrongfully detained in a Reno hospital after being coerced by police earlier this month to provide saliva for a DNA sample that, according to investigators, connected him to the Hawaii cold case murder of a 19-year-old woman.
When Chirila arrived at his arraignment on Wednesday in Reno Justice Court in a wheelchair, he told the court, “I believe if the 9th Circuit (Court of Appeals) saw this, they’d toss it out.”
Any legal challenges to his arrest would have to be made in Hawaii, the location of his trial, Justice of the Peace Scott Pearson informed Chirila.
He did, however, agree to name Chirila a public defender and set a new hearing date on October 3.
Amos Stege, a deputy district attorney for Washoe County, said that he will start the process of asking the governor of Hawaii for a warrant for Chirila’s extradition.
On a fugitive warrant in Reno, where he was apprehended last week on charges of second-degree murder in the 1972 fatal stabbing of Nancy Anderson in her Honolulu apartment, Pearson ordered Chirila to stay incarcerated without bail.
The former deputy attorney general then held the position of head of a company connected to the notorious Mustang Ranch brothel after having previously run for the Nevada Supreme Court.
In a red prison jumpsuit with shackles linked around his waist and appearing thin and bald with some grey hair around the edges, Chirila told the court that the cops who took his DNA sample instructed them they could “knock the crap out of me if necessary” to collect his saliva.
Chirila said, “I kept screaming this is unlawful.”
He said, “You’re turning me into a witness against myself.” “Whether Donald Trump says I won’t respond to a query or I say I won’t provide any samples, it’s a constitutional right,” I said.
When the cops went on Chirila’s house on September 6 with a warrant for the DNA sample and informed him they may use whatever force necessary to get it, Chirila said he had just had eye surgery.
He remarked, “I was terrified as hell they were going to strike my eye. I repeatedly argued that this was unlawful.
According to Pearson, the cops were permitted to use whatever appropriate force to get the sample. Although he acknowledged Chirila’s worries, he asserted that “it’s not an issue in this court.”
The judge reiterated that any constitutional defences would need to be made in Hawaii district court and that any grievances over the way the police handled him would need to be brought in civil court.
Pearson also advised Chirila that the choice was his, but that since the case was so old, the longer he waited, the less likely it was that the witnesses he wanted to call in support of him would be accessible.
He said that since Chirila had admitted that he was the subject of the Hawaii arrest warrant, it was the sole matter on the Reno court’s docket, and extradition was soon nearly likely.
“There doesn’t appear to be much to dispute, but the choice is yours,” Pearl said.
Oh, your honour, Chirila said, “I want to travel to Hawaii.”
“It’s very lovely. The issue is that in my opinion, this arrest was not lawful,” explained he.
“If I go to Hawaii, they’re going to claim that they did nothing wrong and that Reno (police) were the ones who treated you roughly,”
The murder scene at Anderson’s apartment in Waikiki, where she had been stabbed more than 60 times, was connected to him, according to Honolulu police and fresh DNA evidence.
She was a McDonald’s employee who had just relocated from Bay City, Michigan.
According to the criminal complaint filed in Hawaii, authorities have revisited the cold case many times since the murder in 1972 after receiving information that Chirila may be a suspect.
The criminal complaint states that in March, authorities got a DNA sample from Chirila’s son, John Chirila of Newport Beach, California, which proved that he was the biological offspring of a DNA sample discovered at the murder site.
According to Parabon Nanolabs, genetic genealogy and DNA phenotyping—a method of estimating physical characteristics and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence—were both employed in the analysis of the data.
On September 6, according to court papers, police executed a search warrant at Tudor Chirila’s Reno residence and collected a DNA sample from him.
The following day, Chirila was brought into jail “without incident” at a Reno hospital where he had been taken “regarding an attempted suicide,” according to a Reno detective who said in an affidavit that Honolulu police informed him late on September 12 that they had a signed warrant for his arrest.
According to Hawaii News Now, Anderson’s family, which includes her nine siblings, had been looking for some kind of resolution for years.
Jack Anderson, Nancy’s brother, stated, “She was a vital part of our family and when she was slain it simply left a hole in our hearts and in our family.”