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Mistrial declared in Albuqurque rape case

Jurors deadlock; DA says it will likely be retried

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Tuesday, February 5, 2008

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Jurors deadlocked after deliberating for under three hours in the case against an Albuquerque man accused of raping a 3-year-old girl.

The jury began its deliberations after closing arguments Monday morning and worked through the lunch hour but came back that afternoon, saying it had hung with nine jurors finding Rodney Davis not guilty and three finding him guilty of criminal sexual penetration of a minor and child abuse in the May 29, 2006, attack.

Jurors told state District Judge Carl Butkus that more time to deliberate would likely not change their minds. Butkus then declared a mistrial.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Trabaudo said she was disappointed in the quick mistrial but said she expected to retry the case based on what jurors said.

But Davis' attorney, Raul Lopez, said it was clear from the jurors' decision that the case against his client was a weak one.

"We did not think the evidence was that strong," Lopez said.

The case had been a tough one from the start. No DNA evidence linked Davis, 27, or any other suspect to the molestation, and the state had not presented any witness to the act.

Prosecutors had also decided the girl was unable to testify, and Trabaudo was left to rely on the testimony of a woman who said she had been the first to find the little girl pantyless, bleeding from her genitals and in distress.

"Þ'I'm hurting down here,' " Sylvia Chavez said the girl told her, part of the woman's testimony during the three-day trial in Albuquerque. "Þ'That man hurt me.' "

But not all jurors had been convinced of Chavez's veracity, likely because testimony from other witnesses indicated discrepancies in her recollection, that she had been drunk at the time, that the girl was nearly nonverbal and would likely not be able to articulate what happened to her.

Chavez had also not told a detective at the scene that she knew anything about what had happened to the girl or that the girl had spoken with her.

"It is my understanding that three of the jurors believed Sylvia and her explanations," Lopez said. "The other nine saw right through her."

Chavez had been among a number of adults who had been intoxicated to the point of blacking out or passing out during a boozy holiday weekend in which six young children, including the girl, were left almost entirely unsupervised.

Davis, the 27-year-old son of Albuquerque politician Harold Davis de Garcia, testified on his own behalf that he had been invited by the girlfriend of his former girlfriend's cousin to a get-together at an apartment on Rhode Island Street Southeast the night before the attack.

He admitted to drinking a large amount of vodka that night and rum the next day mostly in or near a van parked outside but said he had not seen the children except briefly the night before and had not been alone, even in the bathroom, the only room in the tiny apartment where someone could have had the girl alone.

Defense attorney Lopez had also planted the suggestion in jurors' minds that the actual molester might have been the girl's grandfather, who disappeared before Albuquerque police arrived and was never questioned.

Davis' family, who sat through three days of the often grueling testimony, were disappointed by the mistrial, Lopez said.

"They've been dealing with this for about 20 months, and they are emotional and tired," he said. "They had hoped for closure."

No one from the girl's immediate family attended the trial.