Rape, Slander Alleged : Charges Facing Accuser of CHP Officer Dropped

A Municipal Court judge Wednesday dismissed misdemeanor charges of criminal slander and filing a false police report against a woman who alleged that she was raped by a California Highway Patrol officer who arrested her for drunk driving.

Prosecutors filed charges against the 21-year-old legal secretary after she told officials at the County Jail at Las Colinas--and later an emergency room physician--that she was raped by the six-year CHP veteran. A subsequent medical investigation revealed no evidence that a rape had occurred, and the woman later pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated.

She claimed that she was raped after the officer took her into custody after stopping her on Interstate 8 in El Cajon for drunk driving on the night of Nov. 14, 1985. According to the woman, the officer handcuffed her and placed her in the front seat of his police cruiser after she failed a sobriety test.

In an interview with The Times, the woman said the officer pulled over to the side of the road while en route to Las Colinas and ordered her out of the car. She said the assault occurred while she was still in handcuffs.

Investigations by the CHP and the Sheriff’s Department cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.

The case took several unusual twists. Defense attorney Douglas Harry charged that investigators bungled the investigation because they failed to preserve crucial evidence. Normally, a rape victim’s clothing is seized as evidence, but Harry said that police never confiscated the woman’s undergarments or slacks.

“The clothing could’ve been analyzed to prove or disprove the rape allegation,” Harry said. “(My client) said the assault occurred on a roadside. If police had analyzed the clothing perhaps they could’ve found traces of dirt, gravel or burrs.”

But perhaps the most controversial issue in the case was the argument by Harry that charges against his client were unwarranted because she never filed “an official” police report and declined on two occasions to press charges against her alleged attacker.

The woman told The Times that she was traumatized by the incident and was afraid of the officer.

“He frightened me and I was also frightened by the police investigators because it was clear to me that they didn’t believe my story. I wouldn’t have gained anything by filing a complaint. I just wanted to forget the incident and get on with my life,” said the woman, who has been in counseling since the alleged attack.

Although prosecutors said that Harry’s argument over the police report was “splitting hairs,” Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lopez said the prosecution “was plowing new ground” in the case. It took prosecutors four months after the woman’s arrest to file the charges. Several delays postponed the trial until Tuesday, but Harry’s motion to dismiss was granted by Judge Richard H. Bein on Wednesday.

Prosecutors claimed that the woman’s conversations with investigators from the San Diego Police and sheriff’s department about the alleged incident were official police reports, despite her refusal to file charges against the officer. San Diego police investigators entered the case after a doctor at Clairemont Community Hospital, where the woman was examined, called police to report a possible rape.

The investigation was later turned over to sheriff’s investigators because the alleged incident took place in an area that is under the county’s jurisdiction. After completing the investigation, the sheriff’s department asked the district attorney to file charges.

Sheriff’s investigators and the district attorney’s office also argued that the woman’s conversations about the alleged incident with friends, jail officials and the emergency room physician defamed the officer’s character.

Bein did not rule on whether or not the rape occurred, but he decided that the woman’s conversations with police investigators were privileged and “fell within the scope of official proceedings” and could not be used to prosecute her. Bein also ruled that her conversations with friends and the physician were confidential and did not serve to defame the officer’s character.

“The most significant thing that the court found was that information in these (police) records are privileged and can’t be used to prosecute someone in this manner,” Harry said. “He also found that conversations that you have with friends and a doctor are confidential. It was absurd on the district attorney’s part to try to use these conversations as a basis to charge character defamation.”

Lou Boyle, who is Lopez’s boss, said his office was disappointed by Bein’s ruling, “but nothing has made us change our minds about the propriety of our filings.” He said it was necessary to prosecute the woman in order to “protect the officer against spurious charges.”

An angry Harry charged last month that the district attorney’s case against the woman was “a vendetta” and said that she would not be prosecuted were it not “for a provincial group of law enforcement people in East County” who were watching out for the officer.

“The bad result of all this is that she is also a witness in a rape case, and if it gets out that they are prosecuting rape witnesses, they’re going to have a harder time getting witnesses to testify and victims to file charges . . . You’re prosecuting a witness and victim here to protect a police officer,” Harry said.

Prosecutors declined to discuss the case further and to respond to Harry’s charges. The officer was unavailable for comment.