Prosecutor Fights to Get Rape Case Tried : Justice: Five of seven witnesses are homeless people. Keeping them in town and available has been a struggle.

A Long Beach prosecutor struggling to hold together a rape trial that revolves around five homeless witnesses went so far as to have two of them locked up for the night rather than watch her case sail away on an Alaskan fishing boat.

For Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Rose, merely keeping all concerned parties in Calvin Farrell’s trial in town is a lot like holding water in a sieve.

Farrell, 35, stands accused of raping a 33-year-old homeless woman Sept. 12 in the basement of Christian Outreach Appeal, a local charity where he was working as a security guard the night she stopped in to eat a hot meal and store her possessions.

While homeless people are often the victims of crime, lawyers say such misdeeds are rarely prosecuted. For reasons, they look to the events unfolding in Farrell’s trial this week in Long Beach Superior Court.

The trial, in which jury selection continued Friday, was all set to begin Wednesday when Rose discovered that Jim Smith and Jayevon Mann, two of her best witnesses, were about to leave town for jobs on an Alaskan ship processing fish for nine months.

Marching down to Berth 44 at Long Beach Harbor with a couple of police officers and warrants signed by a judge, Rose had them both arrested for contempt of court. The men were jailed and released the next morning after they promised to stick around and the county promised to fly them to Alaska to catch up with the boat when the trial is over, at no loss of pay.

“They’re nice people. It was a real bummer. I’d rather not have them sitting in jail, but I had to hold onto them somehow,” Rose said.

Smith said he was not angry, adding that he is “a man who believes in justice.” He said that the night in jail was “better than a lot of nights I spent on the street.”

Martha Bryson, a formerly homeless woman and co-founder of the Long Beach Homeless Union, said the prosecutor was “just doing her job.”

That job has proved no easy task. Five of the prosecution’s seven witnesses are homeless. They cannot be subpoenaed because they have no fixed addresses. They cannot be put on call because they have no telephones. Thus, Rose has been watching over them for weeks like a mother goose tending a wayward brood.

“We had to order them here for the arraignment, which is never done. We have to order them back for every appearance,” Rose said this week, minding her witnesses in the hall while awaiting a hearing at which their services would once again be unnecessary. “They just wait here all day and then the judge orders them back again. I don’t want to lose them.”

Further complicating matters are the constitutional rights of Farrell, who has been locked up since Sept. 13 for a crime he claims he did not commit.

Deputy Public Defender Jerry Berger twice asked for a continuance this week, saying his client is being unfairly rushed to trial before the defense completes its investigation.

The prosecutor protested that she cannot hold onto the witnesses much longer and argued that alleged rape victims have a right to begin trial within 30 days anyway. (Friday was Day 22.)

Supervising Judge Richard F. Charvat agreed and sent the case along to Judge Eugene J. Long.

Farrell, who the prosecutor said worked at the charity for bed and board, is accused of escorting the homeless woman to the basement to store her clothes, then locking the door and raping her.

The alleged victim, a woman with a gap-toothed grin who sleeps in the rose garden of a nearby church, said she did not immediately report the crime because she assumed no one would believe her. She decided to call police the next day, however, when Farrell allegedly threatened to do it again.

“I’m scared,” the woman said. “I’m afraid he’s going to get out.”

Rose said that in her 10 years as a lawyer, this is the first time she has gone to trial on behalf of a homeless person. She said she filed the case despite its complications simply because she believes the woman’s account.

“It would be a lot easier if they were all CPAs,” she said. “But they have a right to be protected by the law like anyone else. They are not criminals, just unfortunates.”

The homeless woman seemed surprised that her case had come so far. “Why should a lawyer like that uphold the law for us, justice be done, when we don’t have the money to pay them?” she wondered aloud.

As the court prepared to adjourn one day this week, the witnesses were ordered back the following afternoon to sit in the hall while the lawyers picked the jury. They dutifully agreed, but no one seemed very happy about it.

“It was very rough on me to sit there all day,” said 60-year-old Annette Bennett, who also sleeps in the church rose garden. “I got a lot of things to do.”