Jurors signaled to a judge Thursday that they had reached verdicts on all but one count of forcible rape in the trial of a man accused of kidnapping his former live-in girlfriend’s teenage daughter in Santa Ana and sexually assaulting her over 10 years.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Leversen instructed the jurors to return to court Friday, when he will decide whether to give the panelists further instructions or just ask them to keep deliberating on the sole remaining court.
The forcible rape charge related to the first time Isidro Medrano Garcia had sex with the alleged victim, whom he later married. If he is convicted on that charge, he faces a life sentence.
Garcia’s attorney, Seth Bank, did not contest the three felony counts of lewd acts on a child age 14 or 15, but he argued against the rape and the kidnapping charges.
During the trial last month, Leversen refused to grant the prosecution’s request to have former kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart-Gilmour testify as an expert witness.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Whitney Bokosky argued that Smart’s abduction in Utah bore similarities to the alleged kidnapping in Garcia’s case. He argued that in both cases, the victims did not take advantage of multiple opportunities to escape their captors because of threats.
Bank argued that Smart’s fear of the consequences of escaping were far more considerable. Smart testified that her abductors consistently threatened to kill her and her family if she tried to get away.
Smart’s story became the subject of a made-for-TV movie and she co-wrote a best-selling book about her experiences.
Smart said her experience was much like the alleged victim in Garcia’s case.
“She was being manipulated and held hostage by verbal chains as opposed to physical chains,” Smart testified out of the presence of the jury.
The threat of deportation and then later the fear of losing custody of her child were the prime discouragement from seeking escape, Smart testified.
Garcia, 42, of Bell Gardens, is charged with forcible rape, kidnapping to commit a sex offense and three counts of lewd acts on a minor. Garcia’s alleged victim, then 15, was reported missing in August 2004 by her mother, who suspected Garcia, her one-time live-in boyfriend, of abducting her daughter.
The mother also suspected at that time that Garcia had been sexually abusing the teen for about two months, according to police investigators.
Garcia met the girl in February 2004 and would buy her gifts and take her side when the teen quarreled with her mother, according to prosecutors.
Garcia is accused of molesting and kissing the girl between June and August 2004. He sexually assaulted the girl three different times and raped her once, prosecutors allege.
Garcia is accused of forcing his captive into marriage in 2007 and had a child with her in 2012.
His attorney contends that she had multiple chances to leave the defendant over the course of 10 years and go to authorities, but failed to do so.
The alleged victim contacted her sister through Facebook on her birthday in April 2014, marking the first time her family had heard from her in years. A domestic dispute involving her and Garcia in Bell Gardens led to the suspect’s arrest, police said.
— Wire reports