D.A. to rid gang-rape argument of drugs

Marisa O’Neil

The retrial of Greg Haidl, son of Orange County Assistant Sheriff Don

Haidl, and two friends accused of gang-raping an allegedly

unconscious 16-year-old girl will not include testimony that a

date-rape drug was used in the act.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed Thursday on what evidence

will not be used when the case is retried early next year.

Prosecutors will not call a former Los Angeles Police detective who

testified in the first trial that the girl, referred to as Jane Doe,

had likely ingested the date-rape drug GHB.

“The bombshell is that the district attorney is completely

abandoning the whole theory that the girl was on GHB or a date-rape

drug,” Haidl defense attorney Pete Scalisi said. “Jurors after the

first trial told us they did not buy the government’s theory about

GHB, anyway.”

Keith Spann, Kyle Nachreiner and Greg Haidl are accused of

gang-raping an apparently unconscious Doe at Don Haidl’s Corona del

Mar home in 2002 and videotaping the incident.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno declared a

mistrial in June when jurors were hopelessly deadlocked in the case.

The defense team for the three 19-year-old defendants hired jurors

from the first trial to act as advisors for the second trial.

Prosecutors made a tactical decision to not use the testimony of

Trinka Porrata, who is considered an expert on drugs like Ecstasy and

GHB, Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Schroeder said.

“In this case, we don’t have to prove the specific substance she

was on,” Schroeder said. “The only thing we have to prove is that she

was impaired.”

Prosecutors also won’t introduce evidence that former Haidl

attorney Joseph Cavallo offered an internship to Vanessa Obmann, a

witness for the defense, Schroeder said.

Other points attorneys agreed Thursday to omit were not used in

the first case, she said. They won’t be used in the new case unless

they become relevant, she said.

The district attorney’s office won’t use a more recent

statutory-rape charge against Greg Haidl in an attempt to prove he is

prone to such behavior, Schroeder said. Greg Haidl is accused of

having sex with another 16-year-old girl while he was out on bail

awaiting retrial.

Introducing that evidence could have resulted in separate trials

for the three accused, she said.

“We felt it’s important that the defendants be tried together,”

Schroeder said. “The acts were committed together and in consort with

each other.”

Attorneys agreed on a Jan. 31 trial date for the gang-rape case.

It was originally scheduled for Oct. 18 but changed because the

defense team had scheduling conflicts, Scalisi said.

Taking the “drug element” out of the retrial will make for a more

clear-cut case, defense attorney John Barnett said. Barnett

aggressively cross-examined Porrata in the first trial.

“It’s very important to the defense not to have the GHB cloud over

the [retrial],” Barnett said. “There wasn’t any credible evidence,

but just to say it can have an affect on the jury.”

* MARISA O’NEIL covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4268.