Rape Charges Get a Replay in ‘Haidl II’

Stories clash on what really happened that summer night in the garage of the $1.7-million ocean-view Corona del Mar mansion, the home of then-Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl.

But starting today, a second jury will try to decide: Was it rape? Or had the 16-year-old girl agreed to play along with the three teenage boys in a night of sex and heavy drinking?

Attorneys for the defendants, all high school students at the time, say the girl wanted to make a pornographic film and feigned unconsciousness on a pool table and a wicker couch while they engaged in sex play.

Prosecutors, however, say that what happened July 5, 2002, was criminal behavior in which the boys, 17 at the time, plied the girl with alcohol until she passed out, then took turns sexually assaulting her as they laughed, danced to hip-hop music and recorded it all on videotape.

The case against Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both now 20, and Gregory Haidl, the 19-year-old son of the former assistant sheriff, ended in a mistrial last summer after jurors deadlocked. The jury was leaning toward acquittal on nearly all counts.

“Haidl II,” as the retrial has been dubbed in legal circles, will be a streamlined version of the case. Prosecutors have slashed the number of charges each defendant faces, along with their potential prison sentences if convicted. Although each defendant no longer would face up to 55 years in prison, the stakes are still high. Convictions on all nine counts they now face could send them behind bars for up to 23 years each, or they could receive probation.

Allegations that the boys slipped GHB -- or gamma hydroxybutyrate, the so-called date rape drug -- into the girl’s drink have been dropped. The case now rests on the assertion that the accuser, identified only as Jane Doe, was heavily intoxicated and can be seen on the videotape consuming a can of beer and 8.5 ounces of gin from a plastic foam cup.

Defense attorneys say the change in tactics helps their case. The young woman testified in the first trial that at a Fourth of July party at Don Haidl’s Corona del Mar house the night before the alleged rape, she chugged vodka from the bottle after downing several mixed drinks.

“The night before, she had a lot more to drink and was obviously intoxicated, yet she clearly remembers the events of that night,” said one of Haidl’s attorneys, Pete Scalisi. “When the tape was made, she had to have known what was going on.”

But Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton, who is prosecuting the case, said comparing the two nights isn’t valid. Drunk people often have “questionable estimates” of exactly how much they have consumed, he said.

Jurors in the first trial saw the tape; the public has only heard it, when it was played in court. The girl is heard only at the beginning of the 20-minute tape, teasing Haidl for trying to take off her shirt, then saying, “I am so [messed] up.” Against a soundtrack of rap music, the boys speak occasionally and luridly.

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A complex path winds from the defendants’ middle-class Rancho Cucamonga upbringing to Don Haidl’s garage to the fluorescent lights of the 11th-floor Santa Ana courtroom where they will probably sit for the next two months. Spann, Nachreiner and the accuser still live in Rancho Cucamonga; Gregory Haidl moved to Orange County.

They met Jane Doe during the summer after their junior year.

She met Spann at a McDonald’s the night school ended for the summer, and within days had sex with him at a party, she testified. A few weeks later she attended the Fourth of July gathering at Don Haidl’s home.

That night, she testified, she met Nachreiner and skinny-dipped with him, and later had sex separately with Gregory Haidl and then Spann. Jane Doe drove with friends to the Fourth of July party, but returned by herself the next night. She insisted that she did not consent to sex.

After seven weeks of testimony, jurors deliberated 13 hours before announcing they were deadlocked. Most jurors had voted for acquittal on nearly every count.

Only one juror stood firm in her belief that the girl on the video was being raped and that the teens should be convicted on every count.

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Although the media chronicled each twist in the first trial, the hoopla may be less intense this time because of the Robert Blake and Michael Jackson cases.

“The attention for the next couple of months will be on Michael Jackson dancing across a parking lot, not clips of Greg being taken into custody,” said Spann’s lawyer, Peter Morreale.

Since the first trial, the participants have remained in the spotlight:

* At a celebration the night the jury deadlocked, Haidl met a 16-year-old girl and within two weeks had sex with her. He was charged with statutory rape, and the judge from the gang-rape trial ordered him to follow new restrictions or have his bail revoked. After being arrested in October on suspicion of driving under the influence, Haidl was placed in Orange County Jail until the retrial’s conclusion.

* Haidl’s father resigned in September from the Sheriff’s Department to spend more time with his family, he said.

* In November, Jane Doe was charged with possession of methamphetamine for sale. She has pleaded not guilty.

The prosecutor in the first trial, Dan Hess, acknowledged then that Jane Doe had “made some bad choices” as a teenager. The prosecutor in the retrial has indicated he may go further in recognizing her promiscuity and then emphasize that it is irrelevant to her rape allegations.

Jane Doe will be the prosecution’s first witness.