Gang-Rape Trial Jury Starts Deliberations

Jurors in an Orange County gang-rape trial started deliberating Thursday after the prosecutor showed them one last time the video of the alleged assault, providing commentary in which he mocked the defense’s case as “asinine.”

“We don’t have to prove she’s unconscious, but when you look at that,” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton said of the video, “it’s ridiculous to argue that she knew what was going on, that she could do math problems.”

The three defendants each face nine charges in the July 2002 incident involving a girl who was then 16. It occurred at the Corona del Mar home of Donald Haidl, then an assistant sheriff, who is one defendant’s father. Prosecutors say the girl was passed-out drunk after the opening moments of the video, but defense attorneys say she was alert enough to have said no and only pretended to be unconscious.

Allowed the last word before the jury was dispatched to its conference room just before lunch, Middleton argued over the course of an hour that an acquittal would be irrational.

“These defendants were not concerned about her participation,” he said. “They welcomed her unconsciousness because she could not say no.”

The defendants -- Gregory Haidl, now 19, and Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both 20 -- were first tried last summer, but the judge declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked.

Spann’s lawyer, Peter Morreale, gave his closing argument Thursday, continuing the defense strategy of questioning the alleged victim’s credibility. He said she has lied about not remembering the night of the incident because she didn’t want her parents to know she willingly participated in kinky, videotaped sex.

“Her goal is to save face at the cost of these boys,” he said.

Parts of the footage viewed by the jurors showed the girl jerking her head, rolling over and pushing her hair back when it got in her face, demonstrating that she could respond to what was going on around her, Morreale said.

Not so, Middleton countered.

With the video’s volume turned off in the packed courtroom, he narrated the last 10 minutes of the tape

At the point where the boys were inserting the pool cue into her genitals, Middleton said sarcastically, “The face of cooperation there, ladies and gentlemen.”

The prosecutor drew particular attention to a scene that the defense also cited Wednesday, in which the girl, known in court as Jane Doe, was shown lying on a pool table with a cushion beneath her head.

A few seconds afterward in the video, Middleton pointed out, the cushion falls to the floor and Jane Doe’s head flops down and dangles over the table.

“There she goes,” Middleton said. “Does that look like consent?”

As the tape played, Jane Doe’s parents, in front-row seats, searched the jurors’ faces for reaction.

Middleton called Haidl, who did most of the filming, the “maestro,” using different angles and close-ups to show what the other defendants were doing to Jane Doe. The defendants are accused of rape using such objects as a pool cue, cigarette and bottle.

“This is a sexual exploitation by those three defendants,” the prosecutor said. “While they were doing this, they never thought in a million years it would end up here.”