Ex-Boynton officer declines to testify in trial on rape charges; closing arguments Monday
Woman accused Stephen Maiorino of forcing sex on hood of patrol car last year
The jury was out of the courtroom on a break, and Stephen Maiorino was huddling with his attorneys for about 15 minutes Friday with one question hanging in the air: Would the former Boynton Beach police officer testify in his own defense against rape and kidnapping charges?
No, he finally told Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Samantha Schosberg Feuer, bringing his trial nearer to a conclusion. The jury will hear closing arguments from the lawyers Monday, before starting deliberations.
Before Maiorino’s decision to remain silent on the allegations, the defense called four witnesses for brief testimony, and prosecutors Jessica Kahn and Marci Rex presented DNA evidence they say supports the serious allegations.
The ex-cop is accused of kidnapping a woman, 20, while on duty, forcing her to perform oral sex under threat of arrest, and then raping her on the hood of his patrol car, all at gunpoint, on the evening of Oct. 15.
But the defense team, led by attorney Michael Salnick, has contended that there were no crimes because his client and the accuser had consensual sex — with Maiorino’s DNA on the woman’s neck and breasts and her DNA on a condom simply a result of their friendly hook-up.
The Sun Sentinel is not identifying the woman, now 21, because of the nature of the charges: two counts of sexual battery by a law enforcement officer with a firearm, armed kidnapping, and one count called unlawful compensation or reward for official behavior while armed.
That last charge concerns an allegation that Maiorino, 36, threatened to arrest the woman for underage drinking unless she performed oral sex on him.
Maiorino resigned from the Police Department in May; the father of two small children had been an officer for more than eight years. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Included among the key clashes in the trial is a photograph that surfaced of the woman taken more than three years earlier. It depicts her bending over the hood of a police car with her hands behind her back.
She testified about it on Tuesday and Thursday, both times insisting there was nothing sexual in the image, which shows her wearing sweatpants.
The woman said she and some high school friends were having fun around outside a movie theater and they spotted the cruiser.
“I was pretending to be handcuffed to be arrested,” she said. “I was trying to be silly.”
Salnick said the picture, which the jury examined, shows a “shockingly familiar position” to what she claims happened with Maiorino in a grassy field not visible from any homes or businesses.
The defense has told the jury the woman filed a civil lawsuit against Maiorino and the city three weeks after his Oct. 30 arrest, and she needs the criminal conviction to get a big money payout. She denied making up the rape, noting that “would make me the most evil human being in the whole world.”
Another key battle emerged over the defense’s contention that Maiorino, after they rushed into the spontaneous sex, handed the woman his business card “with his private telephone number, hoping that they could get together again.”
The defense argument is that he wouldn’t have given her the business card if he just raped her.
But on the witness stand, the woman said within hours of being attacked she gave her mother a piece of paper with Maiorino’s name on it so the alleged crime could be reported. She and her mother and sister testified there wasn’t a business card.
The court fight on this debate reached a boiling point on Thursday, when Salnick confronted the woman’s older sister about her previous sworn statement that their mom got Maiorino’s business card and that’s how she learned his name.
The sister broke down in tears, calling Salnick “very intimidating” and replied, “I shouldn’t have said business card if I wasn’t 100 percent sure.”
The accuser spent nearly six hours on the witness stand Tuesday. She testified about how she was a passenger in friend Eric Bravo’s Hyundai, after the two spent hours at a bar in the city. On their way back, Bravo blew through a DUI checkpoint, and officers caught up with them after a pursuit. While Bravo was arrested and his car towed, the woman was stranded and needed a ride.
Maiorino picked her up, but while parked outside the police station, the officer held her head down to perform oral sex, she testified. Then he drove to the secluded spot, ordered her to take off her clothes while holding his gun, and proceeded to rape her on the car, she said.
“I thought I was going to die ... I was praying for it to stop,” she told the jury.
Prosecutors say the ordeal ended when dispatchers sounded alert tones requesting Maiorino to respond, and he hurried back to headquarters.