Defendant Says He Has Right to Sex With Wife

The charges against Ramiro Espinosa stemmed from the incident in the attic one hot summer night.

That’s where his wife of 30 years, the woman who had borne him 10 children, had gone to her bed. He went upstairs, opened the locked door with a butter knife and, according to prosecutors, tried to rape her.

In court, Espinosa asserted that he was an innocent man. He was Catholic, he said, and his religion gave him the right to have sex with his wife. And because she was Catholic, too, she had a duty to have sex with him.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge found that the defense had no merit, and Espinosa was convicted of two felony counts. Sentencing, after several delays, is set for Tuesday.

Free on bail, Ramiro Espinosa now contends that he is due a new trial--on the grounds that he has not only a religious but a constitutional right to have sex with his wife. That issue is due to be heard Tuesday as well.

In legal papers filed earlier this month by his defense lawyer, Espinosa claims that California’s attempted spousal rape law unconstitutionally chills the free exercise of his religion.

According to the defense papers, Imelda Espinosa signaled her consent to have sex with her husband the day they uttered their wedding vows--a consent that remains ongoing.

“No one doubts the intensely held mutual Catholic belief of the alleged victim and of the accused that they are obligated to give to each other sexual intercourse,” says the legal brief, filed by Beverly Hills attorney Michael McEntee.

“The objective evidence of the agreement of the alleged victim and of the accused is that they produced 10 children already!”

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The defense papers go on to say of Ramiro Espinosa: “In practical effect, [he] contends that consent is presumed, between husband and wife, to at least fondle each other,” adding, “One cannot readily tell: at what point does fondling or foreplay become [attempted spousal rape]? A wife can suddenly change her mind, after some foreplay, and decide not to have sex. Does this give her a right to claim, as prosecutrix did here, that there was a felony?”

Prosecutor Diana M. Teran called that argument “offensive.”

In legal papers she filed Thursday, Teran also said: “Women are no longer chattel that can be abused, raped and killed by their spouses without consequence in the name of religion.”

Church leaders also reject Espinosa’s argument, saying that sex should be part of a loving relationship. Catholic doctrine holds that each spouse should accede to a reasonable request by the other for sex, said Father Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

“It has to be something that is by mutual consent,” Coiro said, adding, “The man does not have the right to demand sex from his wife at all times, under all circumstances. That’s just not church teaching.”

Interviewed in the backyard of the family’s Los Feliz house, speaking alternately in English and in Spanish, Ramiro Espinosa offered his view of sex within a Catholic marriage: “It’s the right of the man to the woman and the obligation of the woman to the man.”

A 54-year-old upholsterer, Ramiro Espinosa came to the United States 25 years ago from the Mexican state of Jalisco with his wife and growing family. He said: “The Christian religion, and especially Catholicism, teaches that the man is the head of the woman. She has to respect him. And he has to love the wife. It’s a law of love.”

Imelda Espinosa, 55, interviewed separately, charged that her husband did not always act lovingly.

“He used to beat me,” she said, once every three or four years. She also said he would force her to have sex, even when she begged or cried for him to stop.

Asked about those allegations, Ramiro Espinosa said his wife was a “compulsive liar.”

Imelda Espinosa, who now works as a maid, said of her husband: “He constantly was saying to me that I was his wife and I was not to refuse anything he requested from me because our marriage was blessed by God and he was allowed do anything.

“I was always thinking that something was wrong. But I went along.”

For 30 years, she said she went along--until the night of Aug. 29, 1994.

Earlier that day, Ramiro Espinosa had driven to the Tijuana airport to pick up his wife, who was returning from a trip to Jalisco to see her ailing father.

On the way home, he testified, he talked about having sex that night. He said she agreed they would.

About 10:30 that night, according to testimony, he walked upstairs to the attic. She said he had thrown her out of the master bedroom months before, exiling her to the attic.

The door was locked. He knocked but heard no answer, then used the butter knife to unlock it, according to testimony.

The defense version of events is that he then “fondled” her. She then bit him on the lip and they arm-wrestled, according to the defense brief.

“At that instant, I felt a lot of compassion for her,” Ramiro Espinosa testified at the trial, which was held last July. “I looked. And I saw that she had decided not to have sex with me. Then I left her and I got up. And as soon as I left, she started to insult me.”

In an interview, defense lawyer McEntee said: “If the lady had come back from Mexico, from vacation, and had sweet talk with the husband from the Tijuana airport all the way to the family home, and she’s still living with the guy, isn’t this what a wife would like? I mean, some affection.”

Imelda Espinosa said she never consented that day to sex. She said she told her husband on the way back from the airport: “Sex isn’t going to fix anything. We need to talk, to fix what is wrong with our marriage.”

When he came to her room that night, she testified, she was “screaming and begging, asking him to stop, to stop, to leave me alone and to get hold of himself.”

According to the prosecution’s case, Ramiro Espinosa smacked his wife on the face, knocking her down on the bed. He got on top of her and tore her clothes off. She resisted and screamed and finally convinced him to stop.

After anguishing about what to do, Imelda Espinosa reported her husband to the police.

“I’m kind of embarrassed,” she said. “It’s something between he and I. I don’t like to mention it.”

Nevertheless, she said, “I felt very humiliated by him. The way that he treated me that night made me feel very, very bad and I thought, ‘That was enough. I have to do something for myself.’ And I did it.”

Ramiro Espinosa was arrested in December 1994. He spent about five weeks in jail, then made bail and moved back home. Four of the 10 children still live at home; Imelda Espinosa moved out when he came home and now lives by herself.

After a two-day trial last July, Judge Robert O’Neill found Ramiro Espinosa guilty of one count of attempted spousal rape and another count of spousal abuse. Both the prosecution and the defense agree that the case did not involve rape itself but an attempt.

Attempted spousal rape, prosecutor Teran said in a legal brief, carries a term in state prison of up to four years; spousal abuse carries a term of up to four years.

Prosecutors are asking for at least 18 months behind bars. Court files indicated that Ramiro Espinosa has no prior criminal record.

Tarzana psychiatrist Stephen J. Wilson, a court-appointed doctor who interviewed Ramiro Espinosa, recommended no jail time, saying he “does not present a danger to his former spouse.”

Asked what hopes he has for the hearing Tuesday, Ramiro Espinosa said: “I hope to God. He’s my lawyer, and he will show my innocence. It doesn’t matter how or when. My innocence will shine forth after all these lies.”

Imelda Espinosa said she hopes for a just result. “I’m doing this especially for me--and if there are [other] women going through this, know that we just want to be good wives, good mothers. We are not fulfilling the role just according to what our husbands say. God knows we are trying our best.”