Indecent-exposure charges under scrutiny in case of former Laguna Beach rug store manager

It’s been nearly six years since the Orange County district attorney’s office charged the former manager of a Laguna Beach rug store with sex crimes against women, and the case has not reached trial.

A handful of factors have contributed to the delay, including analyzing DNA evidence and accessing transcripts from interviews with witnesses, defense attorney John Barnett said in an interview this week.

Barnett represents Saeid Boustanabadi Maralan, 59, whom the district attorney’s office charged with nine felony counts, including rape, sexual penetration by a foreign object, attempted oral copulation and two counts of indecent exposure with a prior conviction. Maralan, who oversaw the now-shuttered Sirous & Sons Rug Gallery at 222 Ocean Ave., pleaded not guilty to all charges. He now awaits a July 21 pretrial hearing.

“These cases were old when initial complaints was made,” Barnett said, adding that additional witnesses have come forward since the first complaint went public in 2011.

“Usually you have all the evidence and report it in a short period of time,” he said.

In an email Tuesday, Orange County district attorney’s office spokeswoman Michelle Van Der Linden didn’t comment in detail, saying “there have been multiple delays due to a variety of factors.”

Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley is giving prosecutors until July 21 to prove that Maralan’s 2000 conviction of indecent exposure handed down by a Los Angeles County jury was valid, Barnett said. The prior conviction elevated the counts of indecent exposure in the Orange County case to felonies.

Barnett challenged the validity of the conviction, claiming in court papers that L.A. County Superior Court records didn’t specify the acts for which Maralan was convicted.

Conley ruled in May that the records were “cryptic” and “ambiguous” and did not meet standards of the evidence code, according to Orange County Superior Court filings.

For example, the L.A. County jury found Maralan guilty of two unidentified offenses, according to a copy of Barnett’s motion filed in April.

“If even a single juror did not intend to convict the defendant of indecent exposure, then there was no unanimous jury verdict on such a charge and there was no prior conviction in count 5 or count 9 [of the current Orange County case],” Barnett wrote.

In December, prosecutors asked that additional testimony from multiple women be included as evidence in the Orange County case. Those women are not involved in the current nine counts against Maralan.

“The uncharged acts are essential to proving [Maralan] had a common plan and design to effectuate his goal of sexually assaulting women,” according to the district attorney’s office motion.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce

UPDATES:

5:20 p.m. This article was updated with a comment from Michelle Van Der Linden.

This article was originally published at 2:20 p.m.