Post by WaTcHeR on May 12, 2006 12:25:37 GMT -5
05/12/2006 - A former Metro Transit Police officer who set up a date with a prostitute and showed up for the liaison wearing his uniform was convicted yesterday of raping the woman.
With his parents looking on, Darren Way, 32, was found guilty of four counts of second-degree sexual abuse stemming from the encounter in June with the 19-year-old woman at a Dupont Circle inn.
It was by all accounts a bizarre episode: a police officer showing up in uniform to have sex with a prostitute, who was, she testified, apprehensive and reluctant but expected to be paid nonetheless.
Way didn't pay, she said, claiming he had no money but promising to come back and offering his keys as collateral.
Worried about what might happen, the woman said she called 911, but the recording was incomplete, and what she told the dispatcher is unclear. Later that morning, she went to the Third District police station and explained what had happened. An officer -- who testified in the trial that he believed her account -- told her she should go to the Metro Transit Police to report the incident.
Instead, she and her pimp left the District and went to California. It was there, 11 days later, that her allegations about Way came to light, after she was arrested in a prostitution sting.
But her accusations weren't the only allegations Way was going to have to worry about.
Way also was charged in the summer with raping a 33-year-old Silver Spring woman who advertised as an escort; prosecutors later dropped the charge amid discrepancies in the woman's account.
The charges in the District did not go away, and last week, Way went on trial before Judge Erik P. Christian in D.C. Superior Court.
The woman testified for hours, sometimes in tears. Recounting an adolescence addled by depression and drug use, she made for a sympathetic figure. But Jon W. Norris, Way's defense attorney, highlighted apparent holes in her account of how she turned to prostitution. He also suggested that she first contacted police not because she was raped but because she had been cheated out of her earnings.
What happened in the woman's room at the Gallery Inn on Florida Avenue NW, Norris told the jury, was "consensual sex." Way, he said, was guilty of soliciting a prostitute but not of raping one.
But the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy L. Austin Jr., said it was rape. "She had no options," Austin said in his closing argument.
After about four hours of deliberation, the jury came to the same conclusion.
Way, who was fired from the transit police after the allegations came to light, looked stunned by the verdict, clenching his lips and trying to hold back tears.
Afterward, in a telephone interview, the jury foreman said the decision was not easy or fast. The foreman, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said that an important element in the case was the fact that Way was in uniform when he met with the woman.
"An issue for her was fear of arrest," he said, "and the uniform carries with it some inherent weight."
Way, of Gaithersburg, had been free before and during the trial. After the verdict, he was ordered into custody by the judge, who set sentencing for July 14.
With his parents looking on, Darren Way, 32, was found guilty of four counts of second-degree sexual abuse stemming from the encounter in June with the 19-year-old woman at a Dupont Circle inn.
It was by all accounts a bizarre episode: a police officer showing up in uniform to have sex with a prostitute, who was, she testified, apprehensive and reluctant but expected to be paid nonetheless.
Way didn't pay, she said, claiming he had no money but promising to come back and offering his keys as collateral.
Worried about what might happen, the woman said she called 911, but the recording was incomplete, and what she told the dispatcher is unclear. Later that morning, she went to the Third District police station and explained what had happened. An officer -- who testified in the trial that he believed her account -- told her she should go to the Metro Transit Police to report the incident.
Instead, she and her pimp left the District and went to California. It was there, 11 days later, that her allegations about Way came to light, after she was arrested in a prostitution sting.
But her accusations weren't the only allegations Way was going to have to worry about.
Way also was charged in the summer with raping a 33-year-old Silver Spring woman who advertised as an escort; prosecutors later dropped the charge amid discrepancies in the woman's account.
The charges in the District did not go away, and last week, Way went on trial before Judge Erik P. Christian in D.C. Superior Court.
The woman testified for hours, sometimes in tears. Recounting an adolescence addled by depression and drug use, she made for a sympathetic figure. But Jon W. Norris, Way's defense attorney, highlighted apparent holes in her account of how she turned to prostitution. He also suggested that she first contacted police not because she was raped but because she had been cheated out of her earnings.
What happened in the woman's room at the Gallery Inn on Florida Avenue NW, Norris told the jury, was "consensual sex." Way, he said, was guilty of soliciting a prostitute but not of raping one.
But the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roy L. Austin Jr., said it was rape. "She had no options," Austin said in his closing argument.
After about four hours of deliberation, the jury came to the same conclusion.
Way, who was fired from the transit police after the allegations came to light, looked stunned by the verdict, clenching his lips and trying to hold back tears.
Afterward, in a telephone interview, the jury foreman said the decision was not easy or fast. The foreman, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said that an important element in the case was the fact that Way was in uniform when he met with the woman.
"An issue for her was fear of arrest," he said, "and the uniform carries with it some inherent weight."
Way, of Gaithersburg, had been free before and during the trial. After the verdict, he was ordered into custody by the judge, who set sentencing for July 14.