Ex-Officer Sentenced for Rape : Crime: Former San Clemente policeman ‘was running amok,’ judge says in imposing 7 years in prison for attacks on women.

A former San Clemente police officer, described by a judge as “a person who was running amok,” was sentenced to seven years in prison Friday for raping a colleague on the force and sexually assaulting another woman.

David Wayne Bryan, 33, who has been in jail since his Dec. 20 conviction, will be eligible for parole in about 3 1/2 years, prosecutors said.

Bryan was convicted of raping a rookie San Clemente police officer at her home after she and Bryan completed a night shift in April, 1990. The second victim, a divorced mother of two, testified that in 1988 she fought off Bryan’s advances in her home one morning after Bryan walked in unannounced and uninvited.

In the same trial, Bryan was acquitted of raping a third woman, a convenience market clerk from Minnesota.

Bryan’s 51-page pre-sentencing report cited sexual incidents involving at least three other women, including a second San Clemente police officer.

Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, noting Bryan’s many duty commendations and more than a dozen character witnesses who appeared in court Friday, called the case a tragedy and said Bryan’s alcoholism was a chief cause in his downfall.

Bryan was guilty of inflicting acts of “self-degradation and humiliation” on his victims, the judge said, while during the same period he was “apprehending dangerous people, saving people’s lives.”

Bryan’s relations with women, including incidents of slapping his first and second wives, Carter said, “cries out for a lot of help, if not punishment.”

Carter acknowledged that the seven-year term is a “harsh sentence” for a former police officer to serve--probably in segregation for his own protection--and “will seem like 20 years in your case.”

Carter told Bryan he hopes that “you are not turned into an animal or discarded.”

But the judge also observed that the prison sentence might not hurt Bryan any more than his firing last year by the San Clemente Police Department, which ended his lifelong ambition of a career in law enforcement.

Still, the judge said, the clear message he wanted to deliver to Bryan was that “you violated that sacred trust that you cared for so much, and that there will be many police officers and the profession who suffer greatly for that, and that, in the long run, may be the tragedy.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan C. Sturla, who heads the district attorney’s sexual assault and child abuse unit, said that he would have preferred a stiffer sentence but that seven years is fair.

“When a police officer uses his position of trust and power to victimize those that he has sworn to protect,” Sturla said, “we believe that’s an extreme aggravating circumstance and something that should be taken into significant account in imposing sentence.”

But in remarks to the judge, Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia characterized one of the counts against Bryan as a “low-grade” rape and said he does not believe that Bryan is “a pathological danger” to society.

Outside the courtroom, Gumlia said he was not surprised by the sentence.

“I expected about that range,” he said. “I think it’s slightly harsh, but it’s within the discretion of the judge.”

The defendant’s father, Wayne Bryan, who traveled from the family home in Missouri to testify for his son, told the judge that he still cannot believe that his son is guilty.

After the sentence was pronounced, he said only: “When your son is in prison, you don’t like it.”

The jury that convicted Bryan also deadlocked, 8-4, for conviction on another rape charge involving the store clerk. After Bryan was sentenced Friday, Sturla dropped that charge.