Newark Murder Suspect Has Long Rap Sheet

This is a rush transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," August 10, 2007. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MICHELLE MALKIN, GUEST HOST: Now for the top story, more on the developments in Newark. With us now, defense attorney Remi Spencer, who was at the arraignment of Jose Carranza today.

Remi, thanks for joining us. What did you see at the arraignment? What was noteworthy?

REMI SPENCER, FORMER PROSECUTOR: Thank you. This morning, it was an interesting day in the courtroom before Judge Kassal (ph) in Essex County because unusual in many arraignments, there were a number of people there, not just the press, but the victims' family members and relatives were there. Clearly, they were emotional. Clearly, they were sad. It was a very emotionally charged court appearance.

By stark contrast, though, the defendant there stood stoic. He displayed no emotion. He spoke to the judge through the aid of an interpreter and showed no remorse, no emotion whatsoever.

MALKIN: This guy, if you read through the indictment, and I know you have, sounds like a complete monster. And what people want to know is how did this happen? How was this guy still in the country after all of those indictments? How was he let out on bail? Apparently, he put up hundreds of thousands of dollars total two times that he was let out. How could this happen when they knew he was an illegal alien?

SPENCER: That's a very good point. How that could happen just shows the complete lack of a general procedure or protocols to keep illegal aliens off the street, especially when they have a criminal background.

Here, we know that this defendant has the two indictments that you pointed out, that the federal government knew that he was here. And he was already indicted by two Essex County grand juries.

They put a detainer on him, but he wasn't picked up. How could he be out on the street? That's a good question. And I think it's important to point out here, the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction on immigration issues.

Now the state and the Feds, they need to work together in order for there to be any kind of guidelines or procedures. The Feds can't force the state to do anything. But what they can do is to grant them money on the condition that they will then work and cooperate with the federal authorities to make sure that once they identify someone who is here illegally, or who has been convicted of a crime that would subject them to deportation, that the Feds could then come in and make sure that they were in fact held by federal authorities and ultimately deported.

MALKIN: Right. Now we don't know when that federal detainer was placed. I mean, in the case of Terapon Adhan (ph), who was the deportable criminal alien in Washington state, who's accused of murdering Zena Linnic (ph), they only put the detainer on him after they had tied him to her murder. I mean, he had been deportable alien on a number of other charges there. In this case, we don't know when they actually put that lookout or that hold on, right?

SPENCER: That's correct. This morning, the prosecutor, Paula Dow, in Essex County gave a press conference. And which I was also present at. And she did say that there was a detainer issued from the federal government with respect to this defendant's immigration status, but no one knows the details about that yet.

MALKIN: Yes.

SPENCER: And unfortunately, we can't know exactly when that detainer was placed.

MALKIN: Right.

SPENCER: But because he's been indicted on two separate occasions in the last year, it's about time the Feds put a detainer on him and made sure that even if he could come up with his bail here, which was set at a million dollars, he's not going anywhere. The Feds have a detainer on him and he won't be released.

MALKIN: I'd like to know what he was doing? This is -- was this guy a day laborer? And if so, how is it that he could cough up the money that he did to get out on bail on those other charges?

And the other thing is we've got tight-lipped federal and local officials here. And it puzzles me that they tied him to a fingerprint, right? That was one of the details. There was a fingerprint left on a beer bottle. If they had that fingerprint, that means somebody fingerprinted him along the way. There are several databases. And I've done a lot of research on this. I did a book called invasion about our immigration enforcement system. You've got something called the IBIS system, you've got IDENT, you've got DACS, the Deportable Alien Control System. If his fingerprints were in there, why wasn't he stopped before?

SPENCER: I think that's the bottom-line question. I think it's just a general lack of procedures or standard operating procedures with respect to people who have fallen into the criminal justice system between the state and local authorities and the federal authorities.

MALKIN: Right.

SPENCER: They're just not working together.

MALKIN: The Standard Operating Procedure is that there is no SOP. Remi, thank you.

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