Man convicted in date-rape trial

Kim Smith

Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 | 9:16 a.m.

It took a jury just two and a half hours Thursday to convict a 22-year-old Marine on one count of sexual assault in what was the first date-rape drug trial in Clark County history.

The jury convicted Lance Cpl. Raymond Flores of sexually assaulting a 32-year-old mother of three, but found him not guilty of sodomizing her.

Flores will face between 10 years and life in prison or 10 years and 25 years in prison when sentenced by District Judge Kathy Hardcastle Jan. 3.

Flores will remain free until his sentencing. Hardcastle declined to have him taken into custody after the jury returned its verdict Thursday night, citing his past court appearances and the lateness of the hour -- 7 p.m.

The judge said she would rely on the Marines to keep track of Flores, as they have been throughout the trial.

Flores was accused of slipping the date-rape drug GHB into the woman's drink and sexually assaulting and sodomizing her.

After the verdicts were read the victim said she always had faith the truth would come out.

The woman testified that she ran into Flores, an acquaintance, at The Beach nightclub on Aug. 14, 1999. After spending a few hours talking with him and several fellow Marines, the woman said she accepted a shot of tequila in anticipation of leaving a few minutes later.

The woman said that is the last thing she remembers until waking up nine hours later half naked in Flores' motel room.

Although University Medical Center does not test for GHB, medical experts concluded the woman had been drugged and sexually assaulted based on her symptoms and injuries.

Flores and a handful of Marines testified that the woman spent most of those nine hours getting drunk with them at the bar and passed out untouched in Flores' bed later that morning.

Prosecutors wanted to prove that the woman was drugged and sexually assaulted. Jurors, however, did not have to find that Flores drugged the alleged victim in order to convict him of sexual assault. They only had to believe that the woman was incapacitated in some way and unable to give consent.

Jury foreman David Schwartz said that although the jurors did not discount the possibility the woman was drugged, they did not base their decision on the GHB issue.

"It was a consent issue," Schwartz said. "She was incapacitated."

Schwartz said the jury could not convict Flores on the sodomy charge because there was another Marine in the room that night and while there was DNA evidence linking Flores to one of the acts, there wasn't any linking him to the sodomy.

Flores and his defense attorney, Dianne Dickson, had argued that not only did Flores not drug and rape the woman, he didn't even have sex with her.

Dickson said during closing arguments that the semen found in the woman's panties was absorbed from Flores' bedsheets, which hadn't been washed in at least a week.

The sperm may have found their way inside the woman with help of instruments used by the nurse who performed a gynecological exam on the woman, Dickson said.

Prosecutors Bill Kephart and Teresa Lowry, however, reminded jurors during their closing statements that Dr. Jay Johnson testified the only way semen can be found near a woman's cervix is if it's deposited during sex.

The panties would not pick up any semen because any deposited on sheets would be dried within a short period of time, Johnson testified.

"You probably don't need to be told that sperm doesn't fly or swim up off of sheets, but the medical evidence is there to confirm it," Lowry told jurors.

Would the average parent believe a teenage girl who came home and told her parents she got pregnant because her panties came into contact with a boy's sperm? Lowry asked rhetorically.

Kephart also pointed out that the only place semen was found on the woman's panties was in the crotch. Had it been absorbed from the sheets, it would be all over the panties, he said.

Schwartz said the defense theory was not reasonable.

"There was no doubt the semen and the sperm were deposited by ejaculation," Schwartz said.

Flores, who is stationed in Miramar, Calif., was in Las Vegas at the time of the alleged sexual assault participating in military exercises at Nellis Air Force Base. He has been reassigned to Nellis until the conclusion of his case.