Case Highlight: Debunking a False Sexual Assault Claim, an Innocent Man Freed. Our client faced the most serious situation of his life. The prosecution and police were convinced by the accusation against him and pursued him relentlessly for a crime he did not commit. There were no injuries, no physical evidence, and no corroboration. The complainant admitted to lying, being intoxicated, and having a foggy memory of the night. Her story was inconsistent, implausible, and contradicted by medical evidence. The jury carefully examined the facts, weighed her credibility, and returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty, saving him from a devastating injustice.

 

[The defendant], he's been waiting a long time for this day. I mean, you heard this happened in May of last year, so it's been over ten months to get to this point, a long time waiting, thinking every single day, wondering if he's going to be convicted for this heinous crime, a crime that he didn't commit. Now, the prosecution in their opening and in the closing just now told you they're asking you to find him guilty of rape, that he forcibly raped [the complainant]. And, in essence, anytime they bring a charge like that, when you indict somebody and you bring them before a jury, you're making a promise. The promise is that you have that evidence that's just so crystal clear, so powerful, and so compelling that at the end of it you're sure what happened. The evidence has come and it has gone, and it has completely failed to do that, and it's failed to do that for a number of different reasons.

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As we all know, this is a case where we've just got one person who's pointing the finger at [the defendant] and saying, This is what he did, and in a case like that it's obviously vitally important, critically important that we look at the facts. I agree with [the prosecutor]. She said the word "facts" a lot of times, but I think almost everything she said was her fantasy of what happened in that room. She wasn't in that room. There were only two people in that room. And she tried to take the word "facts" and control it because the reality is they don't have a single fact on their side. I agree this case should be about the facts because people, they've got motivations. They have agendas. People lie. Facts don't lie. And that's why the focus in a case like this should properly be on the facts. I mean, you can't look at [the complainant] -- I mean, it's really purposeless to look at her and try to mind-read and, you know, divine what's going on in her mind. Let's look at the facts and see whether any of them support that a forcible rape occurred.

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Fact Number 1. The prosecution tried to sweep it under the rug, no mention was just made of it, the nurse's examination. Not a single mark on her body. No genital injuries. No bruises, scratches, marks. Nothing on her body. Absolutely nothing. Now, the Commonwealth, they like to try to have it both ways and say, Well, you know, if there's injuries, it's consistent with rape, but lack of injuries, well, that's consistent with rape too. I mean, that's them really talking out of both sides of their mouth. You can't have it both ways. If injuries are consistent with rape, there's only one reasonable way to interpret lack of injuries. It's inconsistent with rape. You shouldn't guess. You shouldn't surmise. You can't guess a man into a criminal conviction. And if there are no injuries, you can't just guess, Well, it was a rape anyway. I mean, the lack of injuries in and of itself alone, standing alone is enough for you to have no choice but to find the man not guilty. That in and of itself is the reasonable doubt that's required, but there's a lot more than that.

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Fact Number 2. There is one irrefutable documented example of lying in this case, and that comes from [the complainant]. [The complainant] admitted on the cross-examination, I called [the defendant] and I told him a bunch of lies about being torn, about bleeding, and then she said, Well, you know, the police officer told me to do it, so I thought it was okay. Please identify that for what it is. Excuses like that don't cut it when we're dealing with something this serious. The one example that we know of somebody lying is [the complainant], and one lie, I'm sorry, but it poisons everything. You can't just disregard one lie and say, Well, you know, the rest of what she's saying must be true.

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What about Fact Number 3? [The complainant] acknowledges that her memory of that evening is extremely foggy. On the cross-examination, she acknowledged, I told [witness] that I was suffering from memory loss from that night. I told [witness] that I was intoxicated that night. She acknowledged on the cross-examination, Yeah, I was, you know, in and out of consciousness. I was half asleep. I was perceiving things in the room, but it was foggy. She is their entire case. They have nothing else other than [the complainant]. I mean, just imagine a scenario where someone were to come to you with some sort of important news and they say, This is what I saw. And you say, Well, are you sure? Are you sure that's what you saw? And then they said, Well, I mean, I was drunk and I was half asleep and I was suffering from memory loss. I mean, is that a memory that you would trust with anything important? And it doesn't get much more important than this. The stakes could not be higher. This man's future, this man's freedom, everything that's important to him is on the line today. This is the most important day of his life.

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Fact Number 4. Nobody else in the room heard anything. There were four other people in the room. Three of them testified. The Commonwealth put up this diagram of the room that made the thing look about four times bigger than it is. You've also got the photographs, and look at them. It's not a big room. Nobody heard a thing. Frankly, I don't know what she's talking about as far as any of those witnesses corroborating anything. They all said, Yeah, we were drunk. We weren't really watching them. We went into the room. We didn't see anything else. If there's anything for you to take away from those witnesses, you might remember [witness], who I liked. He came across, I think, as very trustworthy. He said, Yeah, it was weird when [the complainant] showed up with him. I knew she had a boyfriend. 

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But there are a lot of other more deeper and more disturbing aspects of this case. [The complainant]'s story itself, in so many respects, it just doesn't make sense. She testified on the cross-examination, Yeah, my boyfriend knew that I was in bed at the oceanfront with another guy. Use your common sense. Use your experience. Use your life experience. Does that sound like anything that makes sense to you? She had testified that the position she was in when she was penetrated is that she was face down with her legs crossed. These things, they're not -- they're hard to talk about. Nobody likes talking about this stuff in court, but we have to and we're all adults here. For a man to penetrate a woman in that position against her will with her legs crossed and her face down is nearly impossible. She had testified that, Yeah, I didn't scream out. There's a man attempting to penetrate her against her will, she's in a small room, four other people nearby, and she didn't scream at all, didn't let out any noise. It just doesn't make much sense.

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One of the elements the Commonwealth has to prove is force. There has been absolutely no evidence of force. [The complainant], when she testified, acknowledged, Yeah, he didn't pin me down. He didn't hold me down. He was just leaning on me. And, of course, we know she doesn't have a single mark on her body that would be consistent with being held down or pinned down. She said, I wiggled around a little bit. That was the extent of what she said that she did. Where is force in that scenario? There is no force. And that is corroborated by the real evidence, the verifiable evidence, the nurse's report.

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And, of course, you should take into consideration this entire scenario of that night, and you should consider that every single choice that was made was [the complainant]'s. [The complainant] chose to go down to the oceanfront with [the defendant]. She chose to go down there with him alone in a car without her boyfriend. She chose to drink. She chose to go down to the beach with him to stay there with him after most of the rest of the group had already gone back to the room. She chose to stay up with him after everybody else had gone to bed. She chose to go out on the balcony with him to watch the sun rise. She chose to get into bed with him.

Now, does that permit a man to rape somebody? Of course not. But is it something you should take into consideration? Absolutely. And the reason you should take it into consideration is where in that scenario is [the defendant] coercing her or trying to force her, urging her to do anything she doesn't want to do? Rapists, they're manipulative. They try to supply women with alcohol. He's not urging her to drink. She's doing it on her own. They try to separate women from their friends. He never did that. He never said, Hey, I'll give you a ride home. He didn't try to take her away from anybody. Everywhere in this scenario she's the one making the choices. He's not urging her to do anything. He's not trying to coerce her to do anything. All of that is completely inconsistent with rape.

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Really what the Commonwealth is relying on here is the word rape itself. As I had mentioned in the opening, it's an extremely powerful word. There's probably not a word in the English language that stirs up more emotions. I mean, if you're like me, when you just hear the word, you just kind of cringe. I mean, some of you might have done that when you heard it's a rape case. It's a powerful word. But if you strip away the power of the word rape, they've got nothing else left. None of the facts, none of the evidence supports their theory of the case. They don't have any corroboration. As much as they may try to get up here and use the word corroboration and fact over and over again, it doesn't make it so. They have no facts. 

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Beyond a reasonable doubt. Virginia is very reluctant to define it, but I will say it's the highest standard that exists in any court in this country. It is the absolute gold standard, and it's not built on guessing. It's not built on excuses. It's not built on, Well, this lie is okay. It's not built on medical reports that completely contradict the Commonwealth's theory of the case. Beyond a reasonable doubt is about having an airtight case, overwhelming evidence so you don't have any doubt. There is doubt all over this case.

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I'll be finishing up in just a few moments. The prosecutor in these things, because they've got the burden, they get to have the last word, and that always kills me because you're sitting there and you want to stand up and you want to say, No, that's not the way it is, but, you know, I can't do that, but just keep in mind that just because they say it last doesn't make it so. The beauty of our system is they don't get the last word. You get the last word. You get to tell the government what to do today.

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When we started this case, you had all agreed with me that if you couldn't be sure, if you couldn't be sure beyond a reasonable doubt what occurred in that room, the only option was to find him not guilty, and that's where we are. In just a few moments, you're going to be going back into that jury room to deliberate, and you're going to get an instruction telling you that the verdict has to be unanimous, meaning that all of you have to agree on the same verdict. And I think there's a way of putting that that drives it home a little bit more and it makes it a little bit more powerful, and that is each and every one of you, individually every single one of you is responsible for the outcome of this case. Any single one of you can stand up and say, This is not beyond a reasonable doubt. We cannot be sure what happened in that room. Any single one of you can prevent an injustice from occurring.

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The Commonwealth doesn't have any facts to support their case. There's only one proper verdict, and it's not guilty. I doubt anybody's going to be walking out of this courtroom with a smile on their face. It's not the sort of thing that makes people happy, but you can be content in returning a verdict of not guilty because when you do it, you will have done the job that you swore to do. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your service.