Deputy Pleads Not Guilty in Rape

A veteran Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy pleaded not guilty Monday to the 1995 rape of a Calabasas woman while on duty, and to sexually assaulting his wife three times, authorities said.

Harris Scott Mintz, 41, who had worked out of the Malibu-Lost Hills station, faces a maximum of 48 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Sheriff’s internal affairs investigators are continuing to probe allegations that the 10-year Sheriff’s Department employee may have committed other sexual assaults. He is being held on $1 million bail.

Mintz turned himself in at the station where he worked in November, after a nearly yearlong investigation, and after Los Angeles County had already paid the victim in the alleged on-duty rape $100,000 to settle her claim.

Just days after he was charged in connection with that incident, authorities also charged Mintz with brutalizing his wife.

Attorney Paul S. Norris, who represents the Calabasas mother of two, said Monday that Mintz could plead however he liked, but “My client knows what he did.”

While the woman settled her claim with the county to spare her family the pain of a civil trial, Norris said, she would testify in the criminal case.

Compared with what would likely have been exhausting cross-examination in a civil court, the “the criminal action will come and go, and that’s more important to her anyway,” Norris said. “She wants him punished.”

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 12.