Hearing continued in sexual indecency case
A Yuma County Superior Court judge continued Thursday’s hearing for a man charged with making sexual motions in front of three underage girls and three other prior indecent exposure incidents involving minors, so he could hear oral arguments on a prosecution motion.
When asked to provide the court with an update on the status of the case, attorney Wm. Michael Smith, who represents Dwight Raley, said that he received a motion from the prosecution a few days ago to have the two cases against his client consolidated.
Smith explained that he is in the process of reviewing that motion to determine if he wanted to file a written response to it. He added that he is also still waiting for a psychological evaluation to be performed on his client.
A retired city worker, Raley has been charged with five counts of luring a minor for sexual exploitation, four counts of aggravated assault upon a minor, two counts of public sexual indecency with a minor under 15 and two misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure.
He has also been charged with three misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and one misdemeanor count of false reporting.
At his previous hearing in October, Raley was indicted on two charges of public sexual indecency, which created a second case against him. Prosecutor Karolyn Kaczorowski, of the Yuma County Attorney’s Office, explained at the time that the two charges were ones Raley had previously faced, but had to be remanded back to the grand jury for a new indictment because they were incorrect statutorily on the original indictment.
Those two additional charges resulted in a second case against Raley, with Kaczorowski saying the motion would consoli- date them back into the original case, thereby eliminating it. She also said that while no plea offer has been made yet, she does anticipate offering one after she speaks with the victims in the case.
After hearing from both counsel, Superior Court judge Roger Nelson, who is presiding over the case, scheduled Raley’s next court appearance for 2 p.m. on Nov. 30, at which time he would hear oral argument on the motion to consolidate.
Records show that on Dec. 2, 2016, at approximately 7:25 a.m., a 15-year-old Yuma High School female student was stopped for traffic at the corner of 6th Avenue and 6th Street. While there, an unidentified male, now believed to be Raley, exposed himself to the student from inside a vehicle.
The student immediately went to school and reported the incident.
Then, on Feb. 25, at approximately 6 p.m., an unknown male suspect, allegedly Raley, asked a 12-year-old female a question that was sexual in nature while she was at the Cibola Athletic Complex, 4100 W. 20th St.
The victim told police she had seen the same suspect drive by slowly many times as she walked to Woodard Middle School.
On May 2, at approximately 6:41 a.m., an older white male sitting inside a vehicle exposed himself to a 13-year-old female while stopped in the area of Dora Avenue and 19th Street.
Yuma police detectives were able to match either Raley or his vehicle to descriptions provided by victims in the three previous incidents.
Finally, in June, three underage girls who were walking toward a store at the Yuma Palms Regional Center when an older white male, believed to be Raley — who was driving a brown, newer model, Chevy Silverado pickup — allegedly pulled up next to them and raised his hips and made a motion like he was masturbating and drove away.
The man, according to Yuma police, then drove around the parking lot and went back to where the girls were and did the same thing a second time.
The girls told a mall security guard, who located the pickup still in the mall area, got its license plate number and took a picture of it. He then reported the incident to the police.
Yuma police, who had been provided with the pickup’s last known direction of travel by the mall security guard, located it a short time later in the 1000 block of 16th Street and conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle.
Raley, who was driving the pickup, was arrested and booked into the Yuma County jail. Although he initially denied being in the area of the Yuma Palms Mall, Raley eventually admitted he had been there after officers showed him the pictures the security guard had taken of his pickup.