Ex-Officer Not Guilty on 2 Counts of Sex Assault : Courts: Former Long Beach police sergeant is acquitted on rape and attempted rape charges. But the jury deadlocks on a charge of kidnaping.

A former Long Beach police sergeant was acquitted Thursday of raping one woman and attacking a second by jurors who said there was insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict in either case.

Robert L. Ballew, 45, who was fired from the Long Beach Police Department after his second arrest, hugged his wife and sister-in-law after the verdict and said: “Let’s go home.”

A Pomona jury found Ballew not guilty of raping a Navy woman in 1985 and not guilty of attempting to rape a San Pedro woman last September. But in the second case, jurors deadlocked on whether Ballew was guilty of kidnaping the woman with the intent to commit rape.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Clarence Stromwall declared a mistrial on the kidnaping count. Long Beach prosecutors, saying they were disappointed with the outcome of the trial, will consider refiling charges on the kidnaping count.

*

John Barnett, Ballew’s attorney, said he was “very happy the jury saw it our way.”

But jurors said they did not necessarily believe Ballew is innocent. In interviews, a majority of the eight-woman, four-man jury said they felt Ballew is probably guilty but there was insufficient evidence to prove it.

“I think the general consensus (on the jury) was that he did it,” said juror Bob Davila, of Glendora. “But because of the evidence that was given to us, we couldn’t find him guilty.”

Juror Jennie Wong, of Diamond Bar, agreed: “I think he’s guilty but I don’t think there’s enough evidence to prove it. There was reasonable doubt.”

Several jurors who gathered after the trial Thursday agreed with juror Jean Young that “something happened” in both cases and Ballew should receive counseling.

The jurors said they found in favor of Ballew because there was a lack of physical evidence, because the women gave conflicting statements and because there were discrepancies in testimony from other witnesses.

In the most recent allegation, a woman testified that Ballew offered to give her a ride home Sept. 15 but instead took her to a secluded area in San Pedro and attacked her. Los Angeles police officers found the woman, then 30, dazed and partially unclothed, when they answered a call about a woman screaming. Police said the woman had used the drug PCP and could not say whether she was sexually assaulted.

*

A forensic psychiatrist testified that people using PCP are unpredictable and that the woman’s yelling and state of partial undress might have been connected to her use of the drug.

The medical expert was Barnett’s only defense witness. Barnett’s defense took up only about half an hour of the weeklong trial.

In the other case, a then 20-year-old woman in the Navy testified that Ballew, whom she met at a downtown Long Beach restaurant Oct. 11, 1985, offered to give her a ride to the Long Beach Naval Station. Instead, he drove into a secluded area and attacked her, the woman said. At the time, prosecutors dropped the case because of conflicting statements from the woman. When Ballew was arrested for the second case, prosecutors reopened the 1985 case.

Barnett argued that the Navy woman in the 1985 case was a prostitute who gave conflicting statements to police and prosecutors. “If they didn’t believe her then, why should they believe her now?” he asked.

The woman, now married and the mother of two children, flew in from the East Coast for the trial and testified that she has seen three counselors to help her get over the trauma, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Carbaugh.

Ballew did not testify in the trial, to the disappointment of jurors who said they had hoped he would take the stand and tell his side of the story. Jurors said they were unaware that Ballew was fired from the Police Department after 16 years on the force.

“I wanted to hear him testify in the worst possible way,” said jury foreman Willis Baughman, a Diamond Bar insurance executive with a law degree. “But it could have hurt him. It may have helped us arrive at a different conclusion if he had.”