Doctor Testifies in Gang-Rape Retrial

As three teenage boys filmed themselves having sex with her, the alleged victim in an Orange County gang-rape case appeared to be in a deep sleep, a neurologist testified Tuesday.

“At no time in the video do we see her at a level where she can comprehend what’s going on,� said Dr. Peter Fotinakes, the prosecution’s final witness.

The doctor is expected to finish testifying today in the retrial of the son of a former top sheriff’s official and two other young men, accused in the summer 2002 rape of a girl, then 16, who was allegedly passed out drunk.

Fotinakes reviewed for the jury a five-page timeline of the events on the 21-minute tape as the corresponding sections of the video were played. He asked a courtroom aide to pause at points where he said the girl showed signs, through her body language and near-total silence, that she was unconscious.

“There’s no voluntary movement from her here,� Fotinakes said during a scene involving the girl and two defendants on a wicker couch. “She’s being moved around like a rag doll.�

Fotinakes acknowledged under cross-examination that while watching the video he had assumed that the girl, called Jane Doe in court, was not a consensual participant in the encounter and that, because of reflex movements she was making, the boys were physically harming her.

Attorneys for Gregory Haidl, now 19, and Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both 20, say the girl wanted to have an encounter with all three boys and that she was feigning unconsciousness. The can of beer, puff of marijuana and 8.5 ounces of gin she consumed within an hour of the filming did not make her unconscious, they contend.

The other prosecution witness to testify Tuesday said Jane Doe might have drunk the same amount of alcohol the night before, when there is no suggestion that she was unconscious. The girl testified in the first trial last summer that she consumed 10 shots of rum and one shot of tequila the night before the filmed incident but altered her testimony in the current trial to say she drank only half that much -- seven to 10 mouthfuls of rum and the tequila shot -- the night before the alleged July 6, 2002, rape.

Her earlier account of drinking about the same amount of alcohol on both nights has been seized on by the defense as reason to ask why she would have passed out on the second night if she hadn’t on the first.

But fatigue and her near-empty stomach probably aggravated the effects of the alcohol she had the second night, testified Martin Breen, who supervises the Orange County sheriff’s forensic alcohol program.

Both nights’ events took place at the Corona del Mar home of Donald Haidl, Gregory Haidl’s father and an assistant sheriff at the time. All three defendants and Jane Doe lived in Rancho Cucamonga in 2002, but Haidl has since returned to Orange County.