Haidl’s appeal denied

Attorneys representing the son of a former assistant sheriff and two other men who sought to overturn their clients’ convictions and requirements to register as sex offenders have lost their appeal and now have to weigh their next legal step, attorney Dennis Fischer said Wednesday.

“Understandable disappointment” is how Fischer said he felt upon learning that he and his colleagues lost their appeal in the case involving sex offender Greg Haidl and two of his friends.

In a 56-page opinion written by Associate Justice Richard Aronson, he, Presiding Justice David Sills and Associate Justice Raymond Ikola upheld the 2005 conviction of Haidl — who is the son of former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl — Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann. They also rejected the trio’s request that they do not have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

In 2005, they were convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, who had passed out after using drugs and alcohol, in Haidl’s then-Newport Beach home in 2002. The men, who were in high school at the time, inserted foreign objects into her anus and vagina, including a pool cue, Snapple bottle and lit cigarette, while she was passed out on a pool table. They took turns having sex with her and forcing her to orally copulate them.

The teens videotaped the episode, and the tape was key evidence to the girl’s statement that she didn’t remember the assault or giving consent. A friend of the defendants found the tape and turned it over to police.

The men’s attorneys argued to the Court of Appeal last year that the testimony of the girl’s promiscuous sexual behavior in the weeks before the assault should have been allowed in the trial. They wanted to show the jury she had participated in similar activities before and therefore could have been consenting again.

There was plenty of testimony about the woman’s sexual activities in the trial already, and whether she’d consented wasn’t the issue, the panel concluded.

“Rather, the pertinent questions for the jury’s determination were whether Doe’s intoxication rose to a level that prevented her from exercising reasonable judgment on whether to engage in intercourse or other sexual conduct at the time of the alleged offenses and, if not, whether a reasonable person should have known of her incapacity,” the court wrote.

The men were sentenced to six years in prison and have since been released and are registered as sex offenders.