How Steep a Price for 3 Teens’ Foul Acts?

Spent an afternoon in court this week and, like many such afternoons when crime and punishment are weighed, it turned unpleasant and depressing. Let’s just say the fresh air outside Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach seldom felt so good.

Three teenagers were ordered to stand trial as adults for the alleged sexual assault last July of a 16-year-old girl at the Corona del Mar home of the father of one of the teens. The most serious allegations are that the teens, all 17 at the time, gave the girl something to drink that eventually rendered her unconscious, then raped her and invaded her with both ends of a cue stick as she lay on a pool table -- all while they were videotaping.

Some of the sex occurred while she was conscious, but the cue-stick episode occurred while she was out cold.

You won’t read a single word here in defense of the teens.

Even if “Jane Doe,” as the girl is being identified in court, had been videotaped saying, “You have my permission to knock me out and do whatever you want,” the teens’ actions aren’t defensible as acceptable behavior.

But a difficult question lurks behind their foul deeds: determining the appropriate punishment. Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jana Hoffman has filed enough counts to land the teens in prison for decades. Even if a judge sentenced on the most charitable side, the potential exists for the teens serving several years.

Not to put the cart before the horse, but I left the courtroom wondering if 12 jurors, aware of that and the details of the case that emerged during the just-completed preliminary hearing, would vote to convict.

What are those details?

The defense attorneys argued that the girl had previous consensual sex with them as recently as the week before the night in question.

Moreover, they argue, the girl drove from her job in San Bernardino County to meet with the teens the night of the alleged incident and arrived minus her underwear. On a previous occasion, according to a defense lawyer, the girl told friends she hoped to be a porn star someday.

Does any of that mean the teens were justified in doping her and committing sex acts on her? No, a thousand times no.

But will 12 jurors, after hearing that and who knows what else, elect to send three teens to prison? My guess is that, however repulsed, jurors will separate this conduct from the more typical rape scenario. They’ll be told to consider the facts but will agonize and argue whether a night of teen debauchery warrants lengthy prison terms.

As Hoffman said in court, rather compellingly, once you’re unconscious, you can’t consent to anything, change your mind or ask someone to stop or slow down. Agreeing with every bit of that, I pit it against the broader context of the teens’ existing relationship and can’t justify years in prison for the teens’ misdeeds.

So I enter a citizen’s plea to both sides: Settle the case. Don’t make the girl testify, don’t make jurors watch the videotape. Don’t go for winner-take-all at trial that would exonerate the teens or consign them to years of incarceration.

Isn’t wisdom a part of the legal system? Isn’t it called for here? Some way to condemn the teens and deliver meaningful punishment, but without turning them into prison inmates?

Hoffman says she doesn’t expect a plea bargain. “The potential time obviously is great ...” she says, “[but] we don’t know what the sentence will be until after the trial. I’m looking for justice, and however that comes about, that’s my goal, to see that justice is done.”

I hope that translates to a phone call to the defense attorneys.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.