Gang-Rape Case Verdicts Follow Mistrial, and Luck May Play Part

Having gone through a first trial, prosecutors in Orange County’s high-profile gang-rape case were able to temper the charges, hone their arguments and know what the defense had in store.

But the conviction of Gregory Haidl, Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann on sexual assault charges Wednesday may have been more a matter of luck than anything else, some legal experts say.

“It’s an illustration of how erratic the much-praised jury system can be,” said Gil Geis, a criminology professor at UC Irvine.

“It’s a fantasy that justice is even,” he added. “It depends on the cleverness of selecting the jury and a little luck. It’s a dirtier, nastier, less scientific type of process.”

Veteran Orange County defense attorney Paul S. Meyer offered a similar sentiment.

“Juries have their own personality,” Meyer said. “Juries are not vending machines. They are not generic. You don’t put in the facts and the arguments and expect the same result every time.”

But the prosecutors had more than a fresh jury on their side when trying Haidl and his two friends for a second time.

The three defendants -- Haidl is the son of a former Orange County assistant sheriff -- were accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl, an incident that was videotaped and shown in court.

Nine months ago, the first jury viewed the same tape and deadlocked, with most in favor of acquittal.

“Everybody, including the juries who looked at the tape and listened to the evidence, had a different take,” said John Barnett, who represents Nachreiner.

“It’s a very emotional and intellectually challenging undertaking for jurors to look at the tape and apply extremely complicated legal instructions,” he added.

That two juries can look at the same videotape and reach opposing conclusions isn’t a novel outcome for Barnett. He was part of the defense team that won acquittal for four Los Angeles police officers on trial in state court for the videotaped beating of Rodney King.

Later in federal court, the King videotape was a key piece of evidence that sent two of the officers to prison.

Legal experts said prosecutors tend to rely too heavily on a video that appears to capture a crime, leaving an opening for defense attorneys to pick apart the tape and add context to explain the defendants’ behavior.

“Whether you use the Rodney King tape or this tape, it doesn’t tell the whole story,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor. “The prosecutors can’t put all their stock in the videotape. It’s almost a Rorschach test; people see different things.”

To simplify the jurors’ job and make conviction easier, prosecutors in the gang-rape case reduced the number of charges each defendant faced from 24 counts to nine, which also reduced their possible prison sentences.

“Every time you try a case, it’s like a graduate course in the facts of that case,” Meyer said. “This time around, the prosecuting attorneys crafted the charges to meet a broader range of jury personalities.”

Robert A. Schwartz, a defense attorney in Los Angeles, said that, generally, prosecutors the second time around know how the defense will attack the victim’s sexual history in a rape case.

Levenson said prosecutors also benefited from pretrial publicity generated by defendant Haidl, whose numerous runs-in with the law after his gang-rape arrest ended with his bail being revoked.

“Haidl insisted on being a bad boy every step of the way,” Levenson said, adding that being in jail also may have hampered the defense’s preparation.

But, at least for Barnett, the adjustments the prosecution and defense made in the second trial were secondary. “I think the core of the case was always the same: the videotape,” he said. “And that doesn’t change over time or with the number of counts.”

Times staff writers Jean O. Pasco and Daniel Yi contributed to this report.

Retrial verdicts

Three defendants in an Orange County gang-rape trial were found guilty Wednesday on several felony sexual assault charges and are scheduled to be sentenced May 20. Each of the sex-related charges involved intoxication.

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Gregory Haidl, 19: Guilty of six counts of sexual penetration. He faces a maximum 18-year prison term. He was found not guilty of assault with a deadly weapon. The jury deadlocked on charges of oral copulation and rape.

Keith Spann, 20: Guilty of five counts of sexual penetration. He faces a maximum 16-year prison term. He was found not guilty of a sixth sexual penetration charge and of assault with a deadly weapon. The jury deadlocked on oral copulation and rape.

Kyle Nachreiner, 20: Guilty of four counts of sexual penetration. He faces a maximum 14-year prison term. He was found not guilty of rape, sexual penetration and assault with a deadly weapon. The jury deadlocked on oral copulation.

Los Angeles Times