New York City police officers cleared of rape charges

Two New York City police officers have been acquitted of rape. Photograph: Seth Wenig/Reuters

Two New York City police officers have been cleared of raping a drunk woman they had been called to help. They have instead been convicted of official misconduct.

Franklin Mata and Kenneth Moreno were called to help the woman get out of a taxi on 7 December 2008. The woman testified that she passed out and awoke to being raped in her apartment.

Moreno told jurors that he lay alongside her in her bed for a while but they did not have sex.

Mata was accused of acting as a lookout. He said he had been sleeping in the living room.

Mata, 29, and Moreno, 43, have been suspended pending a police department review.

The officers were each convicted of three official misconduct charges, all misdemeanors, for going back to the woman's apartment three times after the initial call without telling dispatchers or superiors where they were. They face a possible sentence of up to one year in jail on each.

Besides the rape acquittal, they were cleared of other charges, including burglary and falsifying business records.

The woman, a 29-year-old fashion product developer, had been out with friends celebrating an impending promotion and move to California. A taxi driver called police for help getting her out of his car at about 1am.

The officers did not tell dispatchers where they were as they repeatedly returned to her apartment ? to check on her at her request, they said. Moreno, a police officer for 17 years, admitted he invented an excuse for one of the visits by calling 911 with a false report of a homeless man sleeping in a nearby building's lobby.

The woman's blood-alcohol level was three or more times the legal limit for driving, and she acknowledged during days of testimony that her memory of the night was spotty.

But she said she acutely remembered the rape, and that other vivid snippets ? police radio chatter, flashlights, the same man's voice urging her to drink water in her bathroom and later asking her if she wanted him to stay in her bedroom ? made her certain her attacker was an officer.

"I couldn't believe that two officers who had been called to help me had, instead, raped me," said the woman, who is suing the city for $57m (�35m) over the incident.

After consulting prosecutors, she secretly recorded a conversation with Moreno a few days later. He alternately denied they had sex and seemed to admit it, saying twice that he had used a condom when she asked him.

Moreno told jurors he was just "telling her what she wanted to hear" because she had suggested she' would go to the station and make a scene.

No DNA evidence was collected in the case.

Moreno said he was trying to advise the woman about drinking during his series of visits.

On the last visit, Moreno said he suddenly found himself fending off drunken advances from the woman.

"I told her: 'There's another time for this. Not tonight.' I kind of had her by the shoulders, and I said: 'We're not doing this,'" he told jurors.

But, he said, he wound up in her bed after she fell and got stuck between her bed and a wall and needed to be freed. He said he stayed there with his arms around her for a time, out of sympathy, but kept his uniform on and did not have sex with her.

Mata, a police officer for five years, admitted he could not be sure what had happened between the two while he was snoozing on the woman's sofa. But he said he did not believe Moreno had raped the woman because "Ken wouldn't do something like that".

He was charged with rape under state legal principles that hold an alleged accessory as responsible for a crime as the main defendant.

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/26/new-york-city-police-officers-cleared-rape

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