Jurors Find Man Guilty in 2 Parking Lot Rapes : Courts: Paul William Jensen of Mission Viejo is also convicted of kidnaping, intimidating a witness and sexual battery.

A Mission Viejo man faces more than 80 years in prison after being convicted Monday of the rape and assault of two women in the parking lots of Orange County shopping centers in 1990 and 1991.

After just one full day of deliberations, an Orange County Superior Court jury found Paul William Jensen, 48, guilty of 25 of 28 charges, including rape, kidnaping, sexual battery, use of a firearm and witness intimidation.

Jensen was acquitted on three charges involving the assault of a third woman.

Jensen, a former computer salesman who was convicted in 1985 of sexually assaulting four other women he had met in bars or through newspaper ads, was ordered to return to court Nov. 22 for sentencing. He remains in Orange County Jail.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Debbie Lloyd said she was pleased by the verdict. Asked if she thought Jensen would ever get out of prison, she replied, “I hope not.”

Jensen’s attorney, Sylvan B. Aronson, said there would probably be an appeal.

“Mr. Jensen is shocked,” Aronson said after the verdict was announced. “He’s innocent. . . . They convicted an innocent man who could now go to prison for the rest of his life.”

Aronson told jurors during the trial that he did not deny that the three attacks took place or that they were brutal and horrific. He said that the prosecution’s case was based on a mistaken identification of Jensen, including misleading composite drawings, differences in reported hairline, color and build, and whether or not the attacker had a mustache.

In a jailhouse interview before the trial, Jensen declared he was being “railroaded” and “assassinated again,” referring to his earlier convictions. “I didn’t do it,” he said.

All three victims took the witness stand and recounted the armed attacks. Two occurred in 1990 at the MainPlace shopping center parking lot in Santa Ana. The third occurred earlier this year in the parking lot of Laguna Hills Mall.

Jurors said they returned not-guilty verdicts on charges in the earlier of the MainPlace attacks because there was a reasonable doubt about the identification by the victim. That attack occurred in June 29, 1990.

The second attack at MainPlace occurred Oct. 25, 1990.

The most recent attack took place on March 5 in the Laguna Hills Mall lot, when a 35-year-old Mission Viejo woman entered her van after shopping. A man she identified as Jensen put a gun to her head and ordered her to a deserted section of the parking lot, where he tied, raped and beat her. He then told her, she testified, that “if I reported this to anyone, he will kill me and my kids.”

The witness intimidation charges were based on a July 10, 1991, telephone call from the jail, in which Jensen gave instructions to the common-law wife of a fellow inmate. In that call, which was recorded, Jensen asked the woman to deliver a note to the Mission Viejo woman. In the recording, which was played during the trial, Jensen said he wanted a note delivered to the woman, reading: “You bitch. I warned you. Don’t you dare call police again. Don’t think I don’t know.”

The tape-recorded phone conversation, said Shawn Julian of Los Alamitos, the jury forewoman, cast a shadow of guilt on Jensen, but the most decisive factor was the witnesses’ testimony.

“The witnesses were very convincing,” she said.

Another juror, Geri I. Swan of Garden Grove, said, “When somebody’s had that done to them, and they see the guy, they know that that’s him.”

As for the discrepancies in the descriptions, Swan said “that’s human nature. We all see things different, and under stress you see things different. You remember things different.”

“Obviously, some doubt was raised on one of the witness’s testimony,” said Julian, which resulted in the not-guilty verdicts.

Juror Billie A. Carroll of Mission Viejo said that “our personal intuition went the other way (toward conviction on the third rape), “but there still was the reasonable doubt” about the testimony of the victim, who was severely beaten.

Told that the jury found the eyewitness testimony and identification a key factor in their verdict, Aronson expressed disappointment.

“They found that testimony compelling? That’s amazing,” he said.

Throughout the trial, Aronson tried to shake the witnesses’ testimony, saying that their descriptions were unreliable and did not match the defendant.

Jensen served 2 1/2 years in prison after his conviction in 1985 for the “date rapes” of four Newport Beach women. He was paroled in 1988.

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this report.