2 Jurors Recall Tough Going in Gang-Sex Case

Although they ultimately handed down convictions, jurors who deliberated the fate of three young men in a high-profile gang-rape case said they had a tough time finding them guilty and had little respect for the victim.

The day after the jury convicted the son of a former Orange County assistant sheriff and two friends of sexually assaulting an intoxicated girl who was 16 at the time, two jurors said the panel found the victim -- a crucial prosecution witness -- to be entirely unbelievable.

In fact, those jurors said Thursday, the panel disregarded her testimony and based its verdicts almost solely on the videotaped footage of the assault, which took place in July 2002 at the Corona del Mar home of Donald Haidl, the father of one of the defendants and a businessman who was also an assistant sheriff at the time.

“There should have been four kids on trial instead of three,” said one juror, a 26-year-old Anaheim resident who did not want her name used. “She was not the easiest victim” to sympathize with.

Another female juror agreed that the video was essential in reaching their verdicts. Without the tape, they both said, none of the defendants would have been convicted because the victim’s insistence that she was unconscious during the assault was not believable.

“In our decisions,” said the other juror, the videotape “was major evidence.”

Still, the first juror said the panel wrestled with another essential question: Was the victim unconscious? They went back and forth, she said, but could not reach a conclusion.

Sentencing is set for May 20. Gregory Haidl, now 19, faces up to 18 years in prison. Keith Spann, 20, could receive up to 16 years. Kyle Nachreiner, also 20, faces up to 14. Each could also receive probation instead.

Potential punishment did not factor into the jury’s 18 hours of deliberations, said the first juror, a Disneyland cashier who has a 4-year-old son. She said the deliberations focused on sexual assault law rather than emotions, although disagreements led to raised voices.

“It got heated back there,” she said. “Everybody’s opinions were pretty spread out in the beginning, and some people changed their minds several times.”

Even during the most impassioned arguments, though, jurors remained respectful of one another, she said.

Deliberations started the afternoon of March 17, with jurors spending the available couple of hours figuring out how they were going to proceed. On Monday, the next day they met, they reviewed testimony by neurologists for both sides and the agreement by both sides that the victim wasn’t physically injured and that she had drunk a beer and 8.5 ounces of 94-proof gin the night of the assault.

They took their first poll that afternoon, and opinions differed substantially. They took about 10 more polls, the juror said, before arriving at their verdict Wednesday morning.

Haidl was convicted of six counts of sexual penetration by intoxication, Spann of five and Nachreiner of four. Jurors deadlocked on two charges: oral copulation by intoxication and rape.

Defense attorneys said they would ask for a new trial, saying the judge inaccurately instructed jurors about the law and that he should have allowed the jury to be told that the victim intended to sue the Haidl family.

The three defendants are being housed in individual cells near one another at Orange County Jail. They are all “devastated,” said Pete Scalisi, one of Haidl’s attorneys.

“I respect the jury, but at the same time I respectfully disagree with their verdict,” he said.

Inside the jury room, jurors watched the footage more than a dozen times, replaying parts showing the girl splayed on a pool table as she was sexually assaulted with a Snapple bottle, pool cue and juice can.

Having that access to the tape was invaluable, the juror said, allowing them to hear words and see actions they couldn’t on the courtroom monitors, and formed their opinion that the defendants should have known that the victim was too drunk to consent. When the defendants were inserting the objects inside her, the juror said, they touched her “very lightly, like they don’t want her to wake up. The boys must have known her condition at that point.”

She said the tape did not shock her.

“To me, it was four drunk kids going too far,” she said. “It wasn’t like that could never happen.”

There were too many inconsistencies in the victim’s testimony to believe her, she said.

“As far as the law goes, she was a victim, and I did sympathize with her,” she said. “But her behavior was just out of control.”

None of the jurors, she said, had a problem throwing out Jane Doe’s testimony.

It was an emotional roller coaster for all of them, she said.

“Everything about what happened that night was messed up,” she said, fighting back tears. “I had to suppress my emotions about it for 18 hours while we deliberated, but when we were done, it all came out. I’m a wreck right now. I can’t even imagine how any of those four kids are feeling right now.”