Jury Acquits INS Officer in Rapes : Courts: The Reseda man is convicted on one count of false imprisonment but is cleared on 18 counts alleging attacks on undocumented Latinas.

An immigration officer was found guilty of false imprisonment Thursday, but a Van Nuys jury acquitted him on 18 other counts involving charges he kidnaped and raped undocumented Latinas he encountered on San Fernando Valley streets.

James E. Riley, 34, of Reseda showed no emotion as the verdict in the eight-week trial was read in Van Nuys Superior Court. The suspended Immigration and Naturalization Service officer faces up to three years in prison for the lone conviction, but he has been jailed nearly 22 months since his arrest and probably will not receive any additional jail time.

The verdict drew immediate criticism from prosecutors and officials from social service agencies that provide aid to undocumented immigrants who are crime victims. They said the verdict will probably send the message to such victims that it is not worth coming forward to authorities.

“I think we let these women down and the system has let them down,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn L. McNary, who prosecuted the case. “I think the verdict sent a very poor message to the community.”

Even some jurors appeared upset by the verdict that they delivered after three days of deliberations.

Speaking outside of court, one juror described Riley as “a total sleaze” and others said they were troubled because they did not believe there was enough evidence to convict him of the crimes they believed he committed.

“Some of us really thought he was guilty,” juror Dana St. John said. “I think he probably is guilty of committing rape and preying on those women, but I can’t say it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Defense attorney Otha Standifer praised the verdicts, but he said he would appeal the one conviction.

“You can’t help but be grateful, but I have believed from the start of this trial that Jimmy Riley was innocent of all the charges,” Standifer said.

Riley was charged with six counts of rape, six counts of kidnaping and seven counts of false imprisonment and assault, and he faced more than 100 years in prison if he had been convicted on all charges.

Prosecutors had contended that Riley preyed on undocumented women for several months in 1990 by threatening to deport them unless they had sex with him. When he was arrested, police found numerous identification cards belonging to the alleged victims and others in his apartment.

The six alleged victims testified during the trial, describing how Riley ordered them into his car, held them and in most cases took them back to his apartment where he forced them to have sex with him.

But jurors said contradictions in the victims’ testimony undercut their credibility.

“He really picked the right victims,” St. John said of Riley. “They were terrible witnesses.”

“We didn’t decide that they were lying,” jury foreman Arthur Miley said. “But the credibility of their testimony wasn’t there.”

Miley said jurors hotly debated the verdicts during deliberations, describing how the panel voted 11 to 1 to convict on one of the charges but later acquitted Riley on a subsequent vote on the same charge.

McNary, the prosecutor, said she was “disgusted” by the jury’s decision and the apparent contradiction within the verdicts. She said that while finding Riley guilty of false imprisonment for holding one of the victims in his car against her will, the jury also found him not guilty of kidnaping for the same incident.

“How can they find one and not the other?” she said.

McNary also said she believed the undocumented status of the victims might have played a key role in the verdict.

“I hate to say that was what was considered, but unfortunately I think that is what it looks like,” she said. “Six fingers pointed at him. But not one of them was believed.”

Spokeswomen for the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women and the Central American Refugee Center also denounced the verdict.

Sandra Cacavas, associate director of the commission, said the six women who came forward have been “re-victimized by the system.”

“It particularly sends a message to the undocumented women that you are not going to be believed, that you are at the bottom of the totem pole,” Cacavas said.

Judge Judith M. Ashmann ordered Riley released from jail pending his sentencing April 3. It is expected that he will receive a mid-term sentence of two years in prison, and with credit for 22 months spent in jail will immediately be placed on parole.