Gang-Rape Trial Jury Must Hear and Weigh Facts of a Sordid Story

Twelve of the unluckiest people in Orange County went to work on Monday, and they put in a long day listening to an ugly story that would wear on anyone’s emotions. Many more such days lie ahead for them, and it’s impossible to see how anything even approaching a happy ending awaits.

They are the jurors in the trial of three young men accused of raping and inserting various objects into a 16-year-old girl as she allegedly lay unconscious. I had previously written that prosecutors weren’t alleging the boys doped the girl, but that’s not so: Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Hess suggested in his opening statement Monday that he would produce testimony indicating the girl was given alcohol and drugs. Defense attorneys were quick to assert later that tests didn’t show the presence of drugs and that the girl drank only a Bud Lite and some gin in the boys’ presence. That was but one of many points of contention on this dreary day in the 11th-floor courtroom of Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno.

The jurors spent more than five hours in their chairs and, during the course of the day, heard things they wish they hadn’t about teenage behavior they wish didn’t exist. As I’m writing this Tuesday afternoon, they are watching a 20-minute video of the alleged assault almost certain to repulse and anger them. How do I know what the eight men and four women are thinking? Because I sat in the courtroom Monday and heard what they heard, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea about the sinking feeling they have about what happened that night in July 2002 and the days leading up to it.

They heard Hess -- in flat tones that, to my ear, made what he said all the more devastating -- describe and show still photos of the boys’ treatment of the girl, who had driven down late at night from San Bernardino County to the Corona del Mar home where the boys had spent much of the day drinking.

At times, I sneaked glances at the jurors. They look as normal as people you’d find in a grocery store checkout line. A young ponytailed man, a middle-aged woman, a younger woman, an older fellow

I never saw any of them show emotion, as stomach-turning as Hess’ words were. I wondered how many of them had sons and daughters. I wondered if they were aware, as a defense lawyer told them later in the day, of “a subculture of teenagers for whom pornography has become acceptable, even glamorous.”

If they were as jarred as I was by the time Hess finished, how quickly -- if at all -- did their emotional gears switch after lunch, when attorney John Barnett began the defense’s counteroffensive?

Barnett, who often represents cops, has an incredible ability to connect with jurors. He wasted no time in telling them the photos were hard to take but in the next breath told the jurors he’d tell them what kind of young girl would consent to that kind of thing. Were jurors repulsed by that? Were they thinking to themselves, “How dare he?” Or by the time he and defense attorney Joseph Cavallo finished at day’s end, were they openly wondering whether there was more to the case than met the video camera’s eye?

As they had been with Hess, the jurors appeared stoic as Barnett and Cavallo laid out a different scenario of that night, delivering a broadside at the girl’s behavior and credibility.

Some things said during opening statements have a way of never being seen or heard again during a trial. Even so, I think the jurors already know what they’re going to be faced with, what the terms of engagement will be.

Where will their intuitions and biases take them? Will they leave them at home each day or bring them to the jury box? Will the video, as unwatchable as it likely is, trump everything else? Will some jurors insist, no matter what the video shows, that the girl’s behavior leading up to that moment -- whatever they determine it to be -- must be factored in? Will they believe the defense’s contention that the girl wasn’t unconscious throughout the alleged assault? Will they think the boys’ actions warrant years in state prison that guilty verdicts would bring? Will they not even think of the potential sentences?

On such things will the verdict turn.

I left after Day One, knowing I didn’t have to come back unless I wanted to.

For the jury, no such luck.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.