© Screengrab/YouTubeStephen Maiorino
Stephen Maiorino, 36, a former Boyton Beach police officer, had been accused of forcing the woman to have oral sex with him then taking her to an abandoned field where he raped her on the hood of his car while on duty. The jury deliberated for 10 hours before clearing him, prompting the victim to leave the court room in tears, saying, "No, no!"
The Sentinel reports the case hinged on the credibility of the 21-year-old woman. Maiorino's defense said he simply had the bad judgment to have consensual sex with the woman while on duty. Maiorino is married with two small children and had been on the police force for eight years before resigning.
Michael Salnick, Maiorino's attorney, used as evidence a picture of the woman in high school, where she posed bent over the hood of a car with her hands behind her back which he said was "strikingly similar" to the one the woman found herself in at the alleged crime scene. The woman said the photo didn't have any sexual overtones and didn't hint at any cop car sex fantasy, the Sentinel reports.
The woman had reportedly been hanging out with a man at a bar before he drove through a DUI checkpoint and was arrested after a brief pursuit. This left the woman stranded. Maiorino offered to take the woman to the police station where she could call her mother and get picked up.
The woman said that while parked at the police station, Maiorino threatened to arrest her for underage drinking unless she performed oral sex. She accused him of unzipping the fly of his uniform and holding her head down. He then drove to a secluded area, forced her to take her clothes off and raped her on the car while he was holding his gun to her head, the Sentinel reports.
"I thought I was going to die ... I was praying for it to stop," she had said.
Maiorino's defense maintained the sex was consensual and he had given the woman a business card so he could see her again, a claim the woman's mother and sister had denied.
Afterward, Maiorino drove back to the station and acted as though nothing had happened. The woman was taken to the hospital and wrote Maiorino's name on a slip of paper so that her mother could report the allegation.
The woman, who works as a waitress at a chain restaurant, said that Maiorino had threatened her that "If you tell anybody, I will find you and I will kill you."
.... was what I commonly heard from my legal colleagues when describing a 'jury'. And these were among some of the finest trial lawyers in California, many of whom you have seen on TV in high profile cases over the decades that I was practicing law, and thereafter. All of them agreed on one thing in private, especially after a few drinks: jurors are among the stupidest groups of people ever assembled for public duty. (In vino veritas!)
But NEVER would they say THAT in public. Oh, Dog no! It was all about wildly praising the public jury system, how ‘smart’ jurors and juries are, and the oh-so-critical place a jury plays in the nation's delivery of truth and justice in a functioning democracy (whatever THAT is anymore.).
Bullshit! These highly intelligent, successful defense attorneys all knew very well that the only 'good' juror is a dumb, easily influenced one. And the prosecutors/assistant District Attorneys I knew agreed wholeheartedly. It was truly disgusting. And seemingly ubiquitous.
Remember well the old lawyer's adage about the reliability of ‘triers of fact’ in criminal cases: The innocent want a judge; the guilty demand a jury. And for obvious reasons.
Another thing we all knew as trial lawyers was that any mention of sex or sexually related subjects was a guarantee that some jurors would simply flip-out silently, in their own minds, while listening to sexually explicit testimony.
Sexual jealousy is HUGE among the semi-hairless apes that call themselves ‘humans’, and it is possible such a scenario occurred here, in the above-referenced matter. If the girl was seen via photograph in a sexy pose as a youth, many sexually-fucked-in-the-head folks (who aren’t getting any, and maybe haven’t for a while, or possibly never have) will immediately say to themselves about the alleged rape, “She wanted it” (i.e., consensual), or even far worse, “That bitch-slut got exactly what she deserved” (justifiable rape), as if the rape of a woman was ever ‘deserving’ or ‘justified’. And this applies to women jurors as much as men, I am sad to report. All of which is very disheartening for those seeking justice for rape victims.
Who knows what actually happened in this matter? Only the defendant and his alleged victim, it would seem.
But I cannot help but feel that the factors outlined above may have played a role, possibly prominently, in this decision. Maybe not. I certainly do not know.
We shall see what happens in any civil case against the officer by the alleged victim, should one proceed forward to trial.
But one thing is for certain: adult rape victims can almost universally rest assured they will be ‘raped’ again in the process of criminal justice in America, and most other nations as well, I’m afraid. Because that’s exactly what it is in rape cases many times: truly ‘criminal’ justice.
And that’s why rape is likely the most under-reported violent crime in the world today, just as in the past. We have made little to no real, fundamental progress there in the last 50 years or so, as our human character in many of us is (sad to say) seemingly too flawed to deal with such emotionally charged issues wisely and humanely, especially in the delicate context of determining guilt or innocence of individuals charged with rape/sexual assault of an adult.