Two men are acquitted in 1982 alleged rape

Molly Ball

Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.

Twenty-two years after two men were accused of beating and raping a young woman for hours, they were acquitted on all charges on Wednesday afternoon.

A jury found Richard Miller, 51, and Spencer Brooks Jr., 48, not guilty on multiple counts of sexual assault, battery, robbery and kidnapping for an incident alleged to have happened in 1982.

The two sobbed uncontrollably as the verdict was read before District Judge Michelle Leavitt.

"God bless everybody," Brooks said afterward. "I can go home and see my kids."

Arrested shortly after the incident, the two missed a court date in November 1982. The outstanding warrant for their arrest went unnoticed until a cold-case detective took a look at it in 2000.

The men's defense lawyers said they were hiding in plain sight. Brooks' public defender, Violet Radosta, said he was eventually found in his own hometown, Sacramento, under his own name.

"He was living his life -- he wasn't fleeing from justice," Radosta said.

The defense claimed there wasn't enough evidence of rape. They said the alleged victim was a prostitute who falsely accused Brooks and Miller, perhaps because they refused to pay her for a sexual encounter.

But the prosecutors pointed to the woman's lengthy testimony in which she admitted she was hazy on many of the long-ago details but was adamant that she remembered Brooks and Miller as her attackers.

The alleged victim, a Seattle native who returned to her hometown after the incident, testified for more than four hours. She said the two men lured her into an apartment on East Flamingo Road, then trapped her inside. They each raped her repeatedly and beat her continuously for about seven hours, she said.

The two were pimps who were trying to degrade and threaten the alleged victim until she agreed to work for them as a prostitute, Deputy District Attorney James Sweetin told the jury.

Sweetin rejected the defense's claim that the alleged victim fabricated the claim of rape. "Does she have any reason on earth to testify under oath ... that she was raped by these men 22 years ago if it didn't happen?" he said.

But Radosta said the facts recorded at the time didn't jibe with the woman's testimony. The seven-hour beating the woman described would have caused more visible injuries, she said.

A medical examination on the morning after the incident found bruises on her throat, one arm, one calf and the inside of one cheek. While it is unclear if any photographs were taken, none survive.

The bathroom door the woman said was kicked in as she cowered inside was not damaged, and neighbors didn't hear a commotion, Radosta said. A cabdriver who allegedly appeared at the apartment midway through the night was never found, and the accused men didn't have injuries that would show the woman put up a fight, she said.

"Much of her behavior on the night of October 28, 1982, points toward consensual sex," Radosta said. "She was looking for sex that night -- she was probably looking for sex with two men that night."

The panties taken from the alleged victim and preserved as evidence bore the words "Double Your Pleasure," and the woman testified that she carried a condom in her purse.

Semen on the panties was tested and the DNA matched that of Brooks but not Miller. Miller's attorney, Gabriel Grasso, said that didn't matter -- no amount of DNA could prove that the sex wasn't consensual anyway.

Grasso theorized that the woman pushed the case forward in order to "cleanse herself" of the shame she carried.

"Unfortunately, back in the '80s, (the alleged victim) was a single mom who didn't have a lot of resources," Grasso said. "She had to do what she had to do. I would submit to you that she's ashamed of that."