Rape Trial Focus: Consciousness

Continuing their attack on the credibility of the alleged victim in a gang-rape trial, defense attorneys on Thursday hammered at inconsistencies in her version of events in the Corona del Mar home of a top Orange County sheriff’s official.

Keith James Spann and Kyle Joseph Nachreiner, both 19, and Gregory Scott Haidl, 18, are accused of committing rape July 6, 2002, in the home of Orange County Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl, Gregory Haidl’s father.

The incident was captured on a videotape that has become the central piece of evidence. The defendants face possible sentences of 55 years in prison each if convicted.

Prosecutors say the woman, now 18, was assaulted while knocked out with a date-rape drug. The three men are also accused of sexually assaulting her with objects including a cue stick, juice bottle and lighted cigarette.

Defense attorneys say she agreed to have sex with the three defendants and that she knew the incident was going to be videotaped. They say she pretended to be unconscious.

In court Thursday, Joseph Cavallo, one of Gregory Haidl’s attorneys, probed inconsistencies between the woman’s accounts to detectives and her trial testimony.

Cavallo questioned her relentlessly about the discrepancy of a few minutes in the time she arrived at Haidl’s house on the night of the alleged rape.

The woman, identified as Jane Doe to protect her privacy, had told investigators she called Spann at 12:36 a.m. on July 6 to tell him she was almost at the house, where the three teens were waiting. But she testified in court that she had arrived at the Haidl house about 12:30 a.m.

The woman never told detectives -- when they interviewed her July 9, 2002, and March 7, 2003 -- that she had been unconscious during the alleged rape.

Under questioning by Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Hess earlier this week, she testified that she went in and out of consciousness while lying on the couch.

“We’re saying that she’s been coached to say she was now unconscious,” Cavallo said outside court.

Cavallo spent much of his courtroom time questioning the woman in an apparent effort to show that she was aware that one of the three young men videotaped her in a previous, consensual sexual encounter, a contention that would support the defense’s position that she was complicit in the taping of the alleged rape.

Earlier this week, under questioning by Hess, the girl testified that she did not know that defendant Spann was videotaping the earlier encounter, which occurred about a week before the alleged rape.

She testified that she told him to turn off the camera when she discovered it.

To challenge this testimony, Cavallo showed the tape of that earlier, consensual encounter to the woman, stopping at several points to quiz her about what appeared on the screen and to suggest that she was probably aware of the camera.

After the jury left for the weekend, the defense received an admonishment from Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno for the second day in a row. Hess complained that Tori Richards, a former district attorney spokeswoman now working for the defense, was passing out the woman’s medical records to reporters, a violation of her privacy.

The judge told Richards to step forward and asked her who told her to release the records. She said it was Cavallo’s co-counsel, Peter Scalisi.

Briseno then ordered them to stop without rebuking them further.

Defense attorneys also said Thursday that they will file a motion asking Briseno to let them tell the jury that the woman’s parents have approached Gregory Haidl about reaching an agreement on damages for the alleged rape.

But Briseno rejected the request because the family has yet to file a civil lawsuit against Haidl.

Cavallo said the settlement offer is proof that the woman has a financial incentive to lie about the alleged rape.