Police obtain man’s DNA in rape case

Incident at shelter under investigation

Santa Fe police obtained DNA sample from a 61-yearold homeless man who has been held in the Santa Fe County jail without bond for six months on suspicion of raping a woman at the emergency homeless shelter on Cerrillos Road, according to court records released Tuesday.

A Santa Fe County grand jury in May indicted Raymond Bernal on one count of criminal sexual penetration resulting in personal injury, a second-degree felony.

Bernal pleaded not guilty to the charge, and his public defender on Tuesday said the prosecution “has been unable to produce the alleged victim for interview.”

Lawyer Jennifer Burrill said the defense has been unable to interview the alleged victim about whether she consented to the sexual encounter, which was captured

xon surveillance video at the Interfaith Community Shelter.

Police who viewed the video said in the affidavit that the woman “is clearly passed out and appears unable to give any type of consent.”

In a subsequent interview with police, the document says, the woman told investigators that she passed out at the shelter that night because she was intoxicated. She said she had known Bernal “simply as a friend and had never been in a relationship with Mr. Bernal.” When the police officer told her that Bernal had sex with her, she said “she did not remember the incident” and that she “had never given Mr. Bernal consent to have sex with her,” according to the affidavit.

A judge set his conditions for Bernal’s release as house arrest on electronic monitoring “which requires both a stable home and access to a phone line,” Burrill wrote in a motion in September, arguing that he was being held in jail simply because he could not afford a home or a phone.

“The defendant is severely prejudiced by the State’s failing to produce the key witness in this matter for interview by defense counsel in that he has no ability to be released from custody until this matter is resolved,” Burrill wrote.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin at the end of December.

Susan Stinson, prosecutor in the case, said the state will move forward with the charge regardless of whether police eventually find the alleged victim. Stinson said evidence contradicts any notion that the sexual encounter, caught in detail on camera, was consensual.

Stinson noted that the woman spoke with police after the incident and was examined at the hospital. The affidavit, which describes the woman as 41 years old, says the New Mexico Department of Public Safety produced a lab report from that examination Oct. 23, and the report identified human male DNA.

Police took samples of Bernal’s DNA on Oct. 30 to find out whether the samples match results from the sexual assault examination of the woman.

But police have been unable to find her as the investigation moved forward.

“She doesn’t have a stable home,” said Stinson, the chief deputy district attorney.

Joe Jordan-Berenis, executive director of the Interfaith Community Shelter, said Bernal and the woman were drunk when they came to the shelter on May 3, so they slept in the shelter’s overflow room where both men and women can sleep on mattresses and mats.

Jordan-Berenis said four staff members — tasked with monitoring the shelter all hours of the night — did not witness or hear the encounter. But a staff member kicked Bernal out of the shelter later that night, he said, and shelter staff reported the incident to police once they found it on surveillance video.

“This took place in a very short period of time,” Jordan-Berenis said of the incident.

Court records show Bernal was convicted of rape in 1986 and faces a pending charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

Contact Justin Horwath at 505-986-3017.