Orange County Assistant Sheriff Donald Haidl's son, Greg Haidl, has had his bail revoked. You may remember the younger Mr. Haidl from the earlier post in this series, in which I wrote:
This hasn't been a big national story, but the alleged gang-rape of a teenaged girl by three boys at a party -- one of whom is the son of an Orange County assistant sheriff -- has been pretty closely watched here in Southern California. The details are pretty simple: the girl passed out at a party and the boys then videotaped themselves having sex with her and sodomizing her on a pool table. Straight-forward, right? Nope, there's been a mistrial.So what'd he do now? Just a little drunk driving, vandalism, trespassing, drug possession and statutory rape -- but at least this time it was consensual, other than the fact that California doesn't let 16-year-olds consent. Now his $200,000 bail has been revoked and he has twice attempted suicide, thereby further devestating his family... just like Scott Peterson. Haidl and Peterson... does anyone really doubt that the former wouldn't eventually become the latter? I bet an investigation of Peterson's childhood would reveal a lot of similarities.Why? The alleged crime is on video tape, but rape is inherently hard to prove and guilt hinges entirely on the state of mind of the woman involved, which is impossible to prove scientifically (until we get magical time-traveling mind-reading machines). Our system of justice doesn't require scientific proof, it only requires "reasonable doubt" proof, but even that's hard to come by when it's one person's word against another's (or three others). ...
The potential for a misunderstanding is rather high when the girl admits that she had sex with at least two of the boys willingly within the week before the alleged rape. There was also some controversy over whether the girl was actually unconscious at the time of the video taping, or whether the whole event was a staged attempt at making a porno, as the girl had previously indicated she wanted to do.
And finally, the jurors from Mr. Haidl's mistrial are being hired by his defense lawyers to help prepare them for the retrial. Since the first jury was deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal, it doesn't seem likely that Mr. Haidl will spend much time in jail.
the girl admits that she had sex with at least two of the boys willingly within the week before the alleged rape.
That's insane...I thought that previous consent wasn't supposed to infer consent.
Manish: It doesn't imply consent, but it sure as heck makes it hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there wasn't consent, which would be required for a rape conviction.
I suppose it comes down to whether the "porno film" defense is plausible..I would think that it would be somewhat obvious from the video whether she was unconcious or not. Some expert or other could probably read her reflexes to determine if she was in fact unconscious or conscious.
CBS just profiled this case on "48 Hours: Mystery" the other night. They even interviewed some of the jurors. For them, it mainly came down to the videotape.
According to some of them, the girl wasn't just laying there "passed out," but made some gestures and movements that indicated to them that she was at least somewhat conscious of what was happening and was accomodating of it. You can argue that she was too drunk to really know what she was doing, but the boys were drunk too, so they were all drunk doing disgusting, stupid stuff.
The jurors also thought it significant that the girl had a pillow under her head on the pool table. They wondered what sort of gang-rapist would have the conscience to make sure his victim was comfortable while he was raping her. It indicated to them a level of "staging" to the act and an absence of malice or "violence."
I think the Haidl kid is a sleazebag, but it's hard to know if he's guilty of rape without seeing the one substantive piece of evidence which would damn or exonerate him. That 11 people saw the video and decided he was innocent of rape is significant, in my opinion.
And listening to the victim's statements in the show's interview (she was interviewed anonymously and "shadowed out"), she didn't sound very convincing to me. But that's just my perception.