We're still trying to understand exactly what happened in Manhattan Criminal Court over the past two weeks that led to former police office Michael Pena—who had been on trial for the alleged rape of a 25-year-old school teacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August—not getting convicted of rape, despite being convicted of three counts of predatory sexual assault. More information has leaked out about the holdout jurors: the Daily News reports that at least one juror didn't believe the victim because she could not recall the color of a car parked by the courtyard where she was attacked: “If she doesn’t remember these details, how does she know she was penetrated,” one juror said, according to their sources.
That juror wasn't convinced the victim knew whether someone had penetrated her own body because she wasn't able to identify the color of a parked car on the morning that a hulking, drunk police officer stood over her, pointed a gun in her face, threatened her life, and told her to shut her eyes and not look him in the face as he sexually assaulted her. This same juror didn't believe her despite the fact the victim testified she had been penetrated ("It hurt"), despite the fact the forensics team had found Pena's semen on the woman's underwear, and despite the fact that several witnesses saw the attack taking place.
“This woman was fighting for her life against an armed assailant who was subjecting her to the worst thing you can do to a living victim,” said Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Manhattan district attorney’s sex crimes unit. “Whether or not she noticed a car is so unimportant in the scheme of what she did know.” The male juror who allegedly said this was one of three—including lawyer Lloyd Constantine—who were focusing “on really odd points” which led to a deadlock and mistrial on the rape charges.
Prosecutors are reportedly looking into possible perjury charges against Constantine for failing to reveal he knew Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance socially, worked with former Gov. Elliot Spitzer, and was a former law partner with Richard Aborn (who had once run against Vance)—all of which would have likely gotten him removed from the jury: “If it was an old lady who thought her neighbor was the DA, that’s one thing,” an angry prosecutor told the News. “But this guy is a lawyer.”
It's entirely possible we won't get any more insights into this particular case and this particular jury again though—a judge ordered that all jury selection records and sidebar conversations with jurors during deliberations be sealed.
