Court Viewers Ponder Outcome

If the jurors think like her, Phyllis Parodi is sure that Orange County’s most publicized criminal trial in years is headed for deadlock.

The retiree has sat through nearly every day of the two-month gang-rape case. The details are salacious -- three young men are accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl in the Corona del Mar home of an Orange County assistant sheriff, one of the boys’ fathers.

“I’m thinking it might be a hung jury,” said Parodi, 64, a former nursing teacher from Dana Point. “One day I’d be swayed in one direction, and the next day I’d be swayed the other way. It seems very even, with a lot of doubt on both sides.”

Parodi is one of a few courtroom spectators who have observed the proceedings for the last eight weeks: watching the alleged victim fight tears on the stand, squirming through medical testimony and studying jurors’ faces as they watched a videotape the youths filmed of the 2002 encounter.

Although they disagree on what should or will happen, none of them thinks a lengthy stint in prison is a fit punishment for the young men if the verdict is guilty.

Jurors could reach a verdict this week: acquitting the defendants, convicting them or deadlocking on some or all of the charges. If there’s a deadlock, a second trial would be likely.

For the most part, the jurors have been stone-faced throughout the trial. Their expressions supply no hints which way they lean.

Interviews with three courtroom observers who have faithfully attended the trial provide some insight into what members of the four-woman, eight-man jury might be thinking. Still, like everyone but the jury and trial participants, they have not been allowed to see the prosecution’s key evidence: the videotape.

One observer said he didn’t need to see the video to know the young men are guilty.

“I think the prosecution has proven that she was unconscious, even though I have not seen the tape,” said a retired educator named Bob, a Costa Mesa resident who was uncomfortable giving his last name. “I think there was something done there that violated her.”

Charged with raping the girl are Gregory Scott Haidl, 18, and Kyle Joseph Nachreiner and Keith James Spann, both 19. Each is charged with 24 counts, including rape by intoxication, forcible rape and assault. They each face up to 55 years in prison.

There is at least one early indication that Parodi’s deadlock prediction may be on target. The jurors sent the trial judge a note Thursday afternoon, asking if they should continue deliberating even if they couldn’t reach a decision on the first count: rape by intoxication.

Nearly an hour later, they asked the court reporter to read back the testimony of the neurologists who testified in the trial. Twice, they have asked to see the video.

As described by both sides in the case, the 20-minute tape shows two of the boys having sex with the girl on a white wicker couch. Later scenes have her splayed on a pool table as the boys prod her with a fruit can, a lighted cigarette, a Snapple bottle and a pool cue.

The girl -- referred to as Jane Doe during the trial -- speaks briefly at the beginning of the segment, telling the boys she is “so [expletive] up,” then is not heard again. The boys talk about her in the third person as a jukebox blasts crude rap songs. Haidl slaps her stomach in time with the beat.

Parodi said she would like to have seen the video to form a more accurate opinion. “But I understand why the judge didn’t let us,” she said. “It’s the jurors who need to see it, not us.”

She added that playing the footage publicly would have greatly increased the defendants’ humiliation if they are acquitted. “It’s something that if you’ve seen it,” she said, “you’d probably never forget it because it’s so gross.”

Since the young men didn’t testify, Bob said, the tape and the alleged victim’s testimony have remained the focus of the case.

“They could have come up with some answers about what wasn’t shown on the tape, whether she was encouraging them or what,” he said. “Without their side of things, all we have to rely on is the girl saying she doesn’t remember.”

Defense lawyers contend the video doesn’t tell the whole story, saying the girl was a wannabe porn star who had fooled around with all three boys the night before and came back for more. She was faking unconsciousness, the lawyers say, so that if anyone found the tape later she could play dumb.

Those aren’t the only character slams the girl, now 18, has taken inside the courtroom. Several of her former friends testified that she was a habitual liar prone to exaggeration and gave accounts of that Fourth of July weekend that differed -- in some places drastically -- from the girl’s version.

While the defense lawyers may have struck some people as too aggressive, they were just doing their job, said Parodi’s husband, 66-year-old retired school principal Gabe Parodi.

“I would hate to have that kind of information come out about somebody that I love, but you’ve got to put on a good defense for those defendants,” he said. “If it requires those kinds of questions, then so be it.”

The campaign to attack the young woman’s credibility made the Parodis place more weight on the testimony of the “professionals”: nurses and doctors who either examined her or formed opinions after watching footage of the incident and the medical exams.

They seem to be more objective, Gabe Parodi said, “because they’re not as intimately involved with the case.”

The problem, the Parodis say, is that the experts were equally believable -- and they contradicted each other. A prosecution witness said the girl was injured during the encounter, and within days a defense expert countered that the examining nurse caused the tears and bleeding. A sexual-assault expert and a neurologist testifying for the prosecution said the girl was unconscious, likely because of the “date-rape” drug GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate; a defense-hired neurologist said she was acting more impaired than she was.

The conflicts make a difficult job even harder for the jurors, said Phyllis Parodi.

Testimony battles aside, she left the trial with “an overwhelming feeling of sadness” for the four teens involved and disgust for the cavalier way she felt they treated sex. The young woman was blase, Parodi said, as she described her sexual encounters during the two weeks prior to the incident.

“Society has told these teenagers that sexual freedom has no boundaries anymore, so naturally they think it’s all OK,” Phyllis Parodi said. “It’s just unbelievable that they could sink to that level, where sex to them is just like drinking a Coke.”

The lurid details of the case made it difficult to relate the prosecution’s depictions of the defendants with how they appeared in court, she said.

The defendants were careful to show their best sides, she said, dressing well every day, standing each time the jury entered or left the room and holding the courtroom doors open for others to pass.

“They seemed sweet,” Parodi said, “like they would never do those things they’re accused of.”

Whatever happens, neither she nor her husband think they should be imprisoned, she said. They were only boys when the encounter happened, they said, and although the young men should be penalized if they’re convicted, the punishment should be more like community service than prison time.

“They would come out hardened if they went to prison,” said Phyllis Parodi.

“Then you’ve got three totally wasted lives.”