Bruce Beresford-Redman Headshot 2011
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Former Survivor producer Bruce Beresford-Redman is seeking to overturn a judge’s decision in July to grant extradition. His lawyers claim that she ignored conflicting evidence and ignored that the victim’s blood was never found in the Cancun resort hotel room, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Attorney Vicki Podberesky, who represents Beresford-Redman, said in a filing that there was no physical evidence to support returning the television producer from Los Angeles to Mexico in connection with his wife’s killing in April 2010.
“No blood evidence belonging to Monica Burgos Beresford-Redman was recovered from inside the room, outside the room or at the sewage cistern, notwithstanding the existence of a chop wound and the fact that hair on the frontal part of the skull had been pulled out, which would have likely caused significant bleeding,” Podberesky claims. Beresford-Redman’s wife was found in a sewage cistern by the hotel.
His attorney says that U.S. Magistrate Jacqueline Chooljian of “culling through the facts and selecting those most supportive of probable cause while rejecting those which were exculpatory or did not fit the government’s theory of culpability.”
Beresford-Redman has been in federal custody in Los Angeles since last year on a fugitive warrant. Chooljian had ruled earlier this summer that there was probable cause to support his extradition.
Beresford-Redman’s attorneys questioned the validity of several pieces of evidence and witness accounts, and noted that the judge had found that the killing happened in the hotel room. They also noted that the judge said that the hotel’s guests heard arguing and cries of distress from from the room the evening Beresford-Redman vanished. Days later, her body was found near her hotel room.
The lawyers said that Chooljian based the majority of her decision on the fact that the couple had been dealing with marital problems because of an affair Beresford-Redman had had with a colleague.
The judge had cited a hotel worker witnessing the couple arguing, but his lawyers pointed out that the witness in question was shown a picture of Beresford-Redman when asked if that was who he had seen and they also brought up the fact that the couple that was seen arguing had no children with them.
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