2 Guilty of O.C. Rapes Get 91 Years

Two men convicted of raping two teenage girls and attacking their boyfriends in a remote eastern Orange County canyon in 2001 were each sentenced Friday to 91 years to life in prison.

Erick Oswaldo Dominguez, 21, and Jesus Rene Green, 18, were found guilty in August of 39 felonies, including rape, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. A third man, Cuahutemoc Torres, 21, was convicted of nine lesser felonies related to the assaults of the boys and will be retried in January on the remaining 30 counts against him after jurors deadlocked on rape charges.

Dominguez and Green seemed resigned, clasping their hands in front of them and looking down as Orange County Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg pronounced their sentences.

“It is hard to imagine a more egregious set of circumstances,” Froeberg said. “Four young people out to have a good time are attacked, the girls stripped not only of their clothes but of their innocence.”

Attorneys for Dominguez and Green had asked the judge to consider the men’s ages at the time of the incident and give them a shorter sentence. Deputy District Atty. Jeff Levy said he had hoped for a longer term but thought the sentences was fair

“There are no winners here,” Levy said outside the Santa Ana courtroom. “Those two men will die in prison, but they have also ruined four lives.”

Authorities say Dominguez, Green and Torres attacked the two couples on July 3, 2001, as they were taking a midnight hike in Black Star Canyon, a rugged area east of Orange. They pummeled the boys, then 16 and 18, with rocks, a metal rod and fists and tied them up before raping the girls, then 13 and 15.

Key evidence in the five-week trial included a jailhouse confession to a newspaper reporter and testimony from the victims and two juvenile defendants who cooperated with authorities under plea agreements and are now incarcerated.

The confession, in which Dominguez told a Los Angeles Times reporter that he raped the 13-year-old but stopped when she told him her age, shows his remorse, said his attorney, Tammy Miller. His shame, along with his youth and the alcohol he had consumed, should have been mitigating factors in sentencing, she told the judge.

Green’s attorney, Joel Garson, said his client has shown a desire to reform his life, earning his high school diploma while in jail and starting to take college-level courses.

The defense attorneys objected to giving their clients sentences they said were akin to penalties for premeditated murder.

“I don’t mean to minimize the effect this has had on the victims in this case,” Miller said, “but they are not dead.”

Garson added: “It’s out of control.... These are humongous sentences for people who were juveniles at the time.”

Froeberg countered that if the victims had been killed, Green and Dominguez would likely have faced the death penalty.

Dominguez’s parents and several of Green’s relatives attended the sentencing but declined to comment. Garson said Green’s sentence was disproportionate to the crimes he committed.

“What happened that night has been horrible and tragic for the victims and for my client,” he said. “[Green] was a nice 15-year-old who got mixed in with the wrong crowd on the wrong night.”

None of the four victims was present. The two young men’s mothers did attend.

One said after the hearing that the sentence doesn’t matter as much as the effect the rapes and assaults will have on their children.

“We don’t know what the long-term effect is going to be on our kids for going through that night of terror,” she said. “That’s the scary thing, that they’re going to be dealing with this for their whole lives.”