Feelings mixed in rape trial verdict

BY COLBY FRAZIER
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

When a Santa Barbara County jury found former UC Santa Barbara men’s soccer player Eric Frimpong guilty of rape, it was met by relief for the victim and stunning surprise for those who believe the man is innocent.

Deputy District Attorney Mary Barron, the prosecutor in the case, said the first thing she did after hearing the guilty verdict was notify the 19-year-old female victim.
“She’s relieved it’s over and I think she was gratified that the jury came to the conclusion that they did and that they considered all of the evidence in the case including her testimony,” Barron told the Daily Sound yesterday.
The jury of nine women and three men delivered their verdict to Judge Brian Hill’s Department 2 courtroom just after 3:30 p.m. After it was announced, Hill revoked Frimpong’s bail and ordered he be taken into custody, Barron said.
Nine-year UCSB men’s soccer coach Tim Vom Steeg, who has said little in the past 10 months about the charges his former athlete faced, told the Daily Sound yesterday he was shocked by the verdict, primarily because none of Frimpong’s DNA was found on the woman.
“How can you have a conviction with no DNA?” Vom Steeg asked. “I don’t understand that. It’s ridiculously confusing to me.”
After Frimpong was arrested on Feb. 17 and later charged with rape, Vom Steeg didn’t rush to judgment and instead said he waited for the DNA testing to come back. When it did come back, it revealed that Frimpong’s DNA wasn’t anywhere on or inside of the woman, and instead there was sperm found on the woman’s panties that belonged to Benjamin Randall, a man she was having an intimate relationship with at the time.
Vom Steeg said he assumed the DA’s office would stop pursuing Frimpong at that point, but they didn’t.
“I can’t get past this,” Vom Steeg said. “All I know is that somebody is in jail and there’s no DNA.”
During the trial Barron said that Randall, a man the victim said she had consensual sex with just days before the incident, had been ruled out as a suspect.
Frimpong, a native of Ghana who turned 22 last Friday, could face as many as eight years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 31.
Attempts by the Daily Sound to reach Frimpong’s defense attorney Robert Sanger for comment were not successful.
Paul Desruisseaux, a UCSB campus spokesman, said he couldn’t make any official statement for the university, but personally he believed the past 10 months have been tragic for all involved.
“This has been a very difficult and challenging situation,” Desruisseaux said. “The victim in this case is a student; the accused is a former student.
“Really there are not real winners in this verdict. [I] can only feel sadness for those involved in it.”
Frimpong, who was a stand-out midfielder for the Gauchos during the 2005 and 2006 soccer seasons, was drafted in Major League Soccer’s Jan. 19 supplemental draft to play for the Kansas City Wizards. On Dec. 3, 2006, Frimpong helped lead the Gauchos to their first ever NCAA National Championship title with a 2-1 victory over UCLA in St. Louis, Missouri.
While the rest of the Gauchos were busy celebrating their national title with a trip to the White House, Frimpong was making regular appearances in Superior Court.
Fast forward to late last week, as the three-week trial was coming to a conclusion, and a healthy contingent of some of Frimpong’s friends and supporters could often be seen shaking their heads as Barron was putting on her case.
Vom Steeg was one of them and topping the list of things he said puzzled him the most was testimony from Barron’s top investigator, who said the advice of only one dental expert was sought to give an opinion on bite marks the victim sustained, when in fact two doctors had been approached.
Vom Steeg had no problem saying he watched the prosecution’s lead investigator perjure himself on the stand and face no consequences.
Vom Steeg questioned if the conflicting statements the investigator made on the stand didn’t warrant his entire investigation to be called into question.
Through the course of the trial, Barron called 31 witnesses while Sanger called only one. While Barron insisted the evidence at hand clearly showed that Frimpong raped the woman, Sanger argued that the evidence so clearly did not show that that he was confident in calling only one witness.
“We’re resting this evidence that is unfortunately so faulty,” Sanger said during his closing arguments last Friday. “Rather than being obligated to do anything else, we’re not. … We’re asking you (the jury) to do the right thing.”
Sanger’s lone witness was Dean Warden, a criminologist for the California Department of Justice lab in Goleta. Warden testified to the level of alcohol in the victim’s blood, which was .20 several hours after the incident occurred.
Warden said the woman’s blood alcohol level could have been as high as .31 at midnight in order for her blood alcohol to be .20 when it was tested at 5:37 a.m. The threshold law enforcement uses in California in order to see if a person is too intoxicated to drive a vehicle is .08.
There was this evidence and the testimony of the victim, who said she met Frimpong outside of a party late on Feb. 16, went to his house where the two played beer pong and eventually ended up on an Isla Vista beach near Frimpong’s apartment where she said the former collegiate soccer star threw her to the ground, bit her cheek and buttocks, and viciously raped her.
Barron said the victim recounted the incident with “painstaking detail” and that while the girl had admitted to having roughly 13 drinks that night, it didn’t warrant rape.
“She may have had a lot to drink,” Barron said during her closing statements Friday. “But the punishment for that is not rape.”
Sanger called the level of alcohol in the woman’s blood “life-threatening” and challenged her ability to recount the events of the evening.
He asked the jury why a violent rapist would take a woman to his home, introduce her to his friends, tell her his name and the country he is from, only to rape her later.
“He’s not trying to disguise himself,” Sanger said of Frimpong’s demeanor on Feb. 17 when the rape occurred. “Is a violent rapist going to take someone to his house?”
As the evidence piled up throughout the trial, it was revealed that none of Frimpong’s DNA was found on or inside of the victim, but her DNA was found on his genitals.
Molds taken of Frimpong’s teeth and the teeth of Randall were discussed thoroughly by Dr. Norman Sperber, a forensic dentist.
Not only did Barron’s top investigator neglect to mention he had sought the advice of local dentist Dr. Raymond Johansen, but he claimed they used Sperber as an expert witness because he would testify for free.
While Sperber was on the stand, Sanger asked if he was being paid, to which Sperber said he was and generally charges $400 an hour to testify in court.
Sanger asked for a mistrial at this point based on the prosecution’s lack of disclosing information to the defense. The request was denied by Judge Hill.
Relying on the two upper front teeth, Sperber told the jury Randall could not have inflicted the bite mark, but it could not be ruled out as not belonging to Frimpong.
Barron commended the jury for sorting through the evidence and coming to what she believes is a correct verdict.
“I have to really compliment the jury on its carefully weighing all of the evidence in this case,” Barron said yesterday. “They had a lot of evidence to wade through.”
While the jury found Frimpong guilty of the felony aggravated rape charge, it found him not guilty of a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery. The latter charge stemmed from a different 19-year-old woman who claimed Frimpong assaulted her a couple of weeks before the rape on the same Isla Vista beach.
During his closing statements, Sanger said the alleged sexual assault allegation arrived only after the story of the rape charge was broadcast in local media. The jury took seven hours on Monday to decide on the verdicts, a time that Barron said isn’t unusually quick or slow.
“It’s hard to really gauge the time, it’s such a unique thing,” Barron said. “Juries are comprised of 12 individuals and each jury is a different entity unto itself.”
Sanger asked for a second mistrial, which was later denied by Hill, after Barron said during her closing statements that Frimpong did not have an alibi, and “has now had 10 months to think about it.”
Sanger said the “10 month” comment was a “blatant” attack on Frimpong for not taking the witness stand, which he emphasized is a constitutional right and such a comment could warrant a mistrial.
When asked about Sanger’s requests for a mistrial, Barron said she didn’t feel it was appropriate to discuss because of the possibility for future litigation.
Barron said it’s not uncommon for the defense to appeal such a ruling and that if Sanger does file for an appeal, it would likely occur after the Jan. 31 sentencing.
“I applaud the time and effort the jury made,” Barron said. “It came to [its] conclusion based on the evidence and I feel that they came to a correct conclusion.”
But Vom Steeg said the whole experience has changed his outlook on the legal system. He said he once believed people sought the truth and wanted to find the truth, but now he’s not sure.
“I look at everything very different today and it’s very sad,” he said. “There wasn’t a pursuit of truth.”