Van de Kamp Aide Did Not Molest Girl, Jury Decides

SACRAMENTO — After 5 1/2 days of deliberation, a Superior Court jury on Tuesday found state Justice Department official Brian Taugher innocent of sexually molesting a 9-year-old girl during his daughter’s birthday slumber party last July 7.

The 38-year-old Taugher, a special assistant to Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, smiled as the court clerk read the verdict. Then, after shaking hands with his attorney, Michael Sands, and some of the jurors, Taugher embraced members of his family. Had he been found guilty of the one count of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child, he would have faced a possible eight years in prison.

“Innocence is the key to the defense,” Taugher told reporters as he received congratulations in the courtroom. “I’ve talked to police freely . . . and everything I’ve done since then has been consistent with my not having been involved.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Hansen said she was disappointed with the verdict.

“It (the verdict) does not change my view of truthfulness,” she said. “(The alleged victim’s) testimony supports a guilty verdict. The fact that the jury was out for six days proved they had difficulty.”

The accusations against Taugher surfaced nearly two weeks after the summer slumber party, when the girl told her mother that Taugher had walked nude into the living room, unzipped her sleeping bag and lain on top of her for several minutes.

Throughout the trial, Taugher had flatly denied that the incident took place.

One juror, who asked not to be identified, said in an interview with United Press International that the jurors tried to reenact the situation using the actual sleeping bag that was introduced as evidence.

“We had someone lay in the sleeping bag and then we had somebody try to unzip the sleeping bag, just the way she described it,” the juror said.

“We couldn’t even get the sleeping bag unzipped,” the juror said. “That swayed a lot of the jurors.”

Taugher was in charge of developing legislation for Van de Kamp and working with legislators to implement it.