At retrial, defendant says case lacks facts

More than four years after his conviction for raping and killing a 13-year-old Camden girl, Miguel Figueroa finally got his say in court yesterday.

Serving as his own attorney at retrial, Figueroa didn't deny killing Shaline Seguinot.

He didn't deny raping her.

And he didn't offer an alibi.

Figueroa did say he was arrested on "an assumption."

"An assumption is not a fact," he told the Superior Court jurors.

But prosecutors said that assumption - that the same man who raped Seguinot also killed her to cover up his crime - was powerful.

The DNA found in the slain girl's body matched Figueroa with 1-in-42 trillion certainty, the prosecutor said.

"Years later, the sperm this defendant so callously left behind would identify him as the killer," Assistant Camden County Prosecutor Greg Smith said.

That evidence was enough to convict Figueroa, 36, at his first trial in 2002. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2005 because Figueroa was denied a request at his first trial to cross-examine some of the witnesses himself.

This time, dressed in a white shirt and tie, his hair styled in neat cornrows, Figueroa read his opening statement yesterday from a yellow legal pad.

He repeatedly referred to himself in the third person, as both Miguel Figueroa and the defendant. He even introduced himself to the jury, saying, "I'm representing Miguel Figueroa."

The case will continue today with prosecution witness testimony.

Seguinot's 1995 murder was one of the city's most notorious crimes, and Figueroa wasn't arrested until nearly five years later.

Detectives twice searched unsuccessfully for him in a mountainous section of Puerto Rico, where they believed he had fled. He was arrested in 2000 in Florida, living under an assumed name.

Figueroa yesterday took exception to the characterization that he "fled" Camden, saying, "perhaps his fear of being accused" caused him to leave.

Seguinot's nude and decomposing body was found in heavy brush behind the Pyne Poynt Family School on Aug. 7, 1995, three days after she disappeared while riding a friend's bicycle in North Camden.

She had been raped, stabbed 10 times, and her throat had been cut "almost ear to ear," Smith said.

Seguinot's mother, Lourdes Vasquez, has said she has forgiven Figueroa, but she was disappointed that the case had to be tried again.

"I left it in the Lord's hands and moved on," she said when the conviction was overturned. "I thought it was behind me. I honestly thought it was behind me."

Vasquez did not attend court yesterday.

Figueroa repeatedly noted in his opening statement that there were no witnesses to the murder, no murder weapon, and no narrative explaining how or why he would have come into contact with Seguinot.

Although he didn't deny raping Seguinot, Figueroa said a wound found on her vagina "could have occurred absent forcible penetration."

He also said that whoever had sex with her didn't necessarily kill her. He added that the medical examiner couldn't prove the sexual contact and the murder happened at the same time.

Figueroa's opening statement echoed the one given in the first trial by his public defender, Joseph Krakora.

"This case is built on an assumption that the person whose semen was found in the girl three days after she disappeared was the person who killed her," Krakora said at the time.

Smith asked the jurors yesterday to use their "common sense," and he recounted the story of when detectives arrested Figueroa at a McDonald's in Florida.

Smith said detectives called out "Miguel, Miguel," but Figueroa said, "No, that's not me." Then Figueroa spotted Camden Police Detective Frank Ruiz, who had traveled to Florida for the arrest.

"He recognized Sgt. Ruiz and he urinated his pants," Smith said. "So what does that tell you?"