Defense: Alleged rapist’s ‘mistake’ was violating policy
Prosecutors seek to refer to civil case
Former corrections officer Enock Arvizo made “the biggest mistake of his entire life” on April 13, 2015, his attorney said in an opening statement on Monday.
Arvizo is on trial this week before state District Judge Briana Zamora on charges that he raped a female Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center inmate in a courthouse elevator as he took her from a third-floor courtroom to a holding area.
“And what that mistake was, was violating Metropolitan Detention Center policy by transporting a female inmate unescorted,” Arvizo’s defense attorney Stephen Lane said. “Because make no mistake, if there’d been a third person that were present that day, we wouldn’t be there today.”
Lane questioned why the woman waited two days to report the alleged assault to her attorney. He also pointed out that tests showed the DNA found on the woman’s underwear could belong to anyone with the same Y chromosome, which would include all of Arvizo’s male relatives.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, said the woman waited to report the assault because she was embarrassed and because she worried she would face retaliation if she told another corrections officer what happened.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Zach Jones focused on the guardinmate power dynamic at play throughout the assault and in the days after. Jones said the woman wore shackles as Arvizo — dressed in an MDC uniform and carrying a gun — forced her to have oral and vaginal sex with him.
“She remembers the gun,” Jones said. “And she remembers thinking, ‘What if I resist?’”
Lane’s opening statement was interrupted briefly when prosecutors objected to his mention of a civil lawsuit that centered on the same allegations. That lawsuit was filed by the woman involved in the present case and two more female inmates, and it named the county and Arvizo as defendants. The $1.2 million settlement paid by Bernalillo County that resolved that lawsuit was the subject of an earlier motion in Arvizo’s criminal case and Zamora ruled that testimony on the settlement would not be permitted at trial.
Attorneys stayed after jurors were dismissed to argue over whether testimony on the civil case is acceptable.
Prosecutors said the only remedies for violating that motion were a mistrial, or to allow prosecutors to talk about the settlement.
“I think it’s fair game that everything comes in or we have a mistrial,” Jones said.
Lane argued that Zamora’s order was “specifically limited to the settlement” and that he should be able to bring up the civil case to show a possible motive behind the woman’s allegations.
Discussion about what pieces of the civil lawsuit will be allowed at trial will resume today.