http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=84540
The Orange County Register
Monday, March 8, 2004
Evidence is clear: Videos convict
And sometimes it's the accused themselves who provide the taped version
of the smoking gun.
By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
Twelve jurors and two alternates sat almost unblinkingly in a 10th-floor
courtroom and watched a 21-minute videotape on two television monitors.
Some squirmed in the swivel seats in the jury box but their eyes remained
riveted on the screens, watching images of two men having sex with an
apparently unconscious woman in a Newport Beach apartment as techno music
droned in the background.
The trial of Allen Ward Crocker provided jurors with a rare chance to see
exactly what happened in a case of alleged sexual assault.
Most of the time, jurors must decide guilt or innocence based on witness
memories, documents or expert testimony. But with the inexpensive but
still-sharp video cameras in existence these days, videotaped evidence is
becoming more and more common in criminal courtrooms, veteran lawyers say.
The Crocker case has similarities to the pending prosecution of Gregory
Haidl, the son of an assistant sheriff, and two of his teenage friends.
They face trial next month in the alleged rape of an unconscious
16-year-old girl in July 2002.
Haidl, 18, videotaped the encounter in Newport Beach, and now prosecutors
are using those images against him.
The accused aren't the only ones providing police with videotape to show
jurors.
In Los Angeles, an amateur photographer recorded the notorious videotape
of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers. And in Orange
County, a surveillance camera at a convenience store captured images of a
former mental patient murdering sheriff's Deputy Brad Riches.
"I call it the proliferation of Little Brother," said Costa Mesa defense
attorney Paul S. Meyer, who has prosecuted and defended in criminal cases
in Orange County for more than 30 years. "You know, just about everyone has
a video camera these days. It's only common sense that these videotapes are
showing up in trials."
In the Crocker case, it took the eight-man, four-woman jury just 90 minutes
to reach a verdict: guilty of rape.
Deputy District Attorney Steve McGreevy argued that the videotape clearly
depicted a crime-in-progress: The woman was unconscious after an evening of
bar-hopping in Newport Beach and unable to give consent.
Defense attorney Robert Chatterton insisted that the videotape showed that
if the woman was unconscious, then Crocker, 36, of Tustin, was unaware of
it. Crocker had a good-faith belief that the woman consented to sex,
Chatterton argued.
"We were able to witness it ourselves," said juror Kristina Durbin, 27, a
health-care worker who lives in Mission Viejo. "Without the videotape, I
wouldn't have been able to reach the decision because he would have been
able to put doubt in my mind. But with the videotape, the crime he was
charged with was right in front of me."
The rape was caught on tape because Crocker's friend and alleged
accomplice, Tim Marino, 41, started his video camera rolling after the
victim passed out.
The victim testified that she didn't know what was happening to her and
didn't know that the episode had been videotaped.
A $500,000 arrest warrant has been issued for Marino, who never kept an
appointment with a Newport Beach police detective after an investigation of
the Sept. 14, 2003, encounter was launched.
Prominent Orange County defense attorney Jennifer Keller, a former deputy
public defender and a former president of the Orange County Bar
Association, said videotaped crimes won't be so rare in the future.
"It seems everything we do now is recorded or videotaped," Keller said. "To
our children, video cameras are second nature."
Assistant District Attorney Roseanne Froeberg, head of the office's
sex-crimes unit, said there have been sporadic cases in the past in which
rapes or other sex crimes were memorialized on videotape. But she said she
is seeing more of them lately.
"It does make it easier for us to prosecute when criminals videotape
themselves in the act," she said. "But to me, it is a sad commentary on our
society. Videotaping their perversions for sport takes things to different
level. An incredibly ugly level, in my opinion."
Said Meyer: "I call these ego crimes, where the criminals memorialize their
deeds on videotape." And yes, he added, "we will be seeing more and more of
these."
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga