Judge won’t dismiss charges

Deepa Bharath

A Superior Court judge on Monday denied a defense motion to dismiss

charges in a high-profile gang-rape case involving the son of an

Orange County assistant sheriff.

Greg Haidl, Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, all 19, are facing a retrial after an earlier jury hopelessly deadlocked on 24 felony

counts, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. Prosecutors refiled

the case, boiling it down to nine felony counts.

Haidl is the son of Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl.

The defendants are accused of raping an unconscious 16-year-old

girl and sexually assaulting her with various objects in Don Haidl’s

Corona del Mar home in July 2002. The defendants also videotaped the

incident. The 20-minute tape was watched by jurors several times

during the first trial.

Greg Haidl’s attorney, Pete Scalisi, wrote the defense motion to

dismiss all charges, stating that based on the first jury’s struggle

with the evidence and an alleged victim who had sexual encounters

with all three defendants, it would be highly improbable that another

jury would be able to come up with a verdict.

Judge Francisco Briseno said he denied the motion because he

believes that the “videotape is an extremely probative piece of

evidence in support of the prosecution.”

Briseno also said he did not want to second-guess a future jury.

“I’m not in a position to forecast what a future jury would or

would not do,” he said. “I believe the people are entitled to a

second trial.”

During the first trial, the defense argued that the videotape was

flawed as evidence because it was incomplete. Many jurors later said

they questioned whether the alleged victim, referred to as Jane Doe,

was unconscious during the incident after hearing testimony from a

neurologist that she seemed to be conscious and consenting to the

acts.

The district attorney’s office has tried many cases in the past in

which it took more than one time to get a conviction, Deputy Dist.

Atty. Susan Schroeder said.

“We’re confident that we can find jurors for this case, although

it was high-profile and covered extensively by the media,” she said.

“The standard is not if jurors have heard or read about the case. The

standard is whether they can put aside what they’ve heard and make a

decision based on the facts presented to them.”

Briseno is also expected to meet with prosecution and defense

attorneys this week to decide whether the defendants should be tried

together or separately.

Both prosecution and defense attorneys said they would like to see

the defendants tried together.

“It’s cost-effective,” Scalisi said.

The district attorney’s office made a tactical decision to try the

defendants together, Schroeder said.

“The three defendants committed the acts together,” she said.

But whether Nachreiner’s attorney, John Barnett, and Spann’s

attorney, Pete Morreale, will ask that their respective clients’

cases be severed is still not known.

Scalisi said it will depend on whether the district attorney will

bring up issues such as Greg Haidl’s most recent brush with the law,

involving sex with a minor; an accusation by prosecutors during the

previous trial that former Haidl attorney Joseph Cavallo offered an

internship to one of the defense witnesses; and statements made by

one of the witnesses for the prosecution that Haidl and Nachreiner

were desperately looking for the videotape they had misplaced.

All three are valid issues the prosecution hopes to present as

evidence during the retrial, Schroeder said.

The trial is scheduled for Oct. 18. But defense attorneys are not

ready to begin on that date, Scalisi said. Morreale and Barnett are

in the middle of other trials and won’t be free to appear on this

case until after Jan. 1, he said.

But the district attorney’s office is good to go, Schroeder said.

“We hope we can get started on Oct. 18,” she said. “We’d like to

see justice served to Jane Doe as soon as possible.”

* DEEPA BHARATH is the enterprise and general assignment reporter.

She may be reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at

deepa.bharath@latimes.com.