Man Acquitted of Charge in Rape Case; Mistrial Declared on 3 Counts : Crime: The alleged victim had recanted her accusation against Oxnard defendant. The prosecution will decide next week whether to seek to retry him.

A Ventura County jury, hearing a rape case in which the alleged victim recanted on the witness stand, acquitted an Oxnard man of attempted sodomy Thursday, but failed to reach decisions on three other sexual-assault counts.

Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch declared a mistrial on the three unresolved charges against Dale Chester, 22.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said prosecutors will announce at a hearing Wednesday whether they will seek to retry Chester.

“We’re disappointed that there wasn’t a conviction,” McGee said. “This is a very difficult case. Any time you have a victim saying she wasn’t a victim, you are facing an uphill fight.”

Deputy Public Defender Robert K. Willey said he expects the district attorney’s office to push for a new trial on the three charges. “My own personal guess from seeing the D. A.’s office over the years is they will ask that it be retried,” he said.

But if the case goes before another jury, Willey said he expects a similar result.

“I think more often this case would hang than not,” he said.

The incident began July 3 when the woman ran screaming from a Camarillo park, banged on a family’s door and told them that she had been raped by a gun-wielding Chester.

Prosecutors played a 911 tape for the jury in which the woman told an operator that Chester had raped her at gunpoint, a story she later repeated to investigators, her mother and close friends.

Chester was arrested near the park, and sheriff’s deputies found a .357 magnum and his underwear close by.

But before the trial, the victim changed her mind about prosecuting Chester, who is related to a man the woman dated at the time. She said that she and Chester had engaged in consensual sex in the park and that she had fabricated the rape story because she was angry with him.

Prosecutors contended in court that the woman recanted because she was threatened by the Chester family.

After 2 1/2 days of deliberations, jurors notified the judge that they could not make any further progress on two charges of rape and one of oral copulation.

The jurors voted 10 to 2 in favor of guilty verdicts on one count of rape and one count of oral copulation, court officials said.

On a second rape charge, the jury was deadlocked at 8 to 4, with the majority favoring conviction.

McGee said the prosecution is encouraged that a majority of the jurors believed that a rape did occur.

Chester remains in the Ventura County Jail, with bail set at $50,000.

Willey, who queried some of jurors after the case, said they gave different reasons for why they deadlocked on the three counts. He said the woman’s testimony that she was not raped appeared to weigh heavily in Chester’s behalf.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth, who tried the case, was out of town and unavailable for comment.