SAN MARTIN
– In his closing arguments Friday, prosecutor Steve Fein
reminded jurors that it is Quintin Daye on trial, not the
17-year-old girl accusing Daye of sexually molesting her hundreds
of times.
SAN MARTIN – In his closing arguments Friday, prosecutor Steve Fein reminded jurors that it is Quintin Daye on trial, not the 17-year-old girl accusing Daye of sexually molesting her hundreds of times.
This seemingly obvious point needed reiterating, Fein said, since the girl’s character and believability were undergoing more scrutiny than Daye’s.
“She’s the one under the microscope,” the deputy district attorney told the jury.
This was as it should be, defense attorney Craig Brown said in his final address to the jury of seven women and five men.
“The focus is often legitimately and justifiably on the accuser,” Brown said. “It isn’t some defense tactic to try to beat up on her. It is part of the truth-finding process.”
Both lawyers agreed this trial hinges on who jurors believe: Daye, or the girl whose testimony is the only evidence against the 45-year-old Gilroy man. There is no DNA evidence that sex between the two occurred, nor did any third party testify to witnessing such acts.
Jurors will return Monday morning to deliberate whether Daye is guilty of any or all of five felony charges: lewd and lascivious behavior to a child under the age of 14, continuous sexual molestation of a child under 14 whom he lived with (which requires three or more incidents) and three counts of rape. If Daye is convicted on all counts, Judge Kenneth Shapero could sentence him to a maximum of 48 years in prison.
The girl claims Daye initiated a sexual relationship with her in the first half of 1999, when she was 13. She said they continued to have frequent sexual intercourse through Dec. 30, 2002, when she was 16. In January 2003, she told police about her relationship with Daye. He was arrested April 2, 2003.
Daye, who testified earlier in the trial, denies these accusations entirely. Dressed in a dark suit and tie Friday, he sat quietly throughout the closing arguments. Later, as the judge detailed his charges to the jury, Daye held his forehead in his hands. He is currently in the custody of the county jail pending $500,000 bail.
The girl estimated she and Daye had sex an average of two to four times a week, or between 400 and 600 times total. She consented to it most of the time, she said, but there were times she said she didn’t want to have sex. On these occasions, she said, Daye became angry and persisted until she eventually gave in. Daye did not necessarily threaten to harm her, she said, but she feared him because he had hit her in the past.
Fein said this behavior of Daye’s qualifies as duress, which Judge Shapero defined as “direct or implied threat.” To find Daye guilty of the rape charges, the jury must determine that he had intercourse with the girl using force or duress.
Fein’s main point, which he repeated several times, was that if the girl was going to falsely accuse Daye of molesting her, she would have told a story that reflected better on herself. Instead of saying she and Daye had consensual sex hundreds of times, Fein said, it would have been easier for her to say he fondled her, or that he forced or threatened her into sex once, or perhaps a handful of times.
“She made it very clear, … she didn’t even feel like she was being coerced,” Fein said.
The girl has no motive to lie about being molested, Fein argued. The upshot for her, he said, has been an investigation and public trial in which her character has been “raked over the coals.” Plus, he said, her living situation has devolved. She now lives outside of Gilroy in a safer situation but one in which she has less personal freedom, less spending money and no car of her own, as she had in Gilroy.
Someone who goes through such adversity to tell a story that reflects so badly on herself must be telling the truth, Fein emphasized.
Daye, on the other hand, has a strong motive to lie, Fein said – to avoid going to prison.
Brown said the girl is lying and has a long history of being untrustworthy. To support this, he referred to character witnesses he had called to the stand, including some of the girl’s friends and their mothers. These said the alleged victim often lied to them about minor matters, such as raiding a refrigerator or things that happened at school. Many of these young girls said they are still friends with the alleged victim. They also described Daye as a father figure.
These girls also said the alleged victim had told them of boys she had had sex with, starting when she was in seventh grade, as well as of more recent dalliances with other girls. The alleged victim denied saying any of these things to these girls and denied any sexual activity between her and anyone except Daye.
The prosecutor said these character witnesses were either lying or mistaken about what the girl told them. They weren’t acting like “very good friends,” he said, and he implied that they in fact had closer ties to Daye than they did to the alleged victim.
Even if the girl did lie occasionally in the past, Fein said, there is a difference between small fibs like most teen-agers tell and falsely accusing Daye of sexually molesting her.
Brown said the routine lies in the past prove that the girl’s testimony is not credible or reliable. He asked each juror to ask him- or herself, “Can I convict someone of the most heinous crimes a man can be accused of based on her testimony and her testimony alone?”
Brown also pointed out several inconsistencies and memory failures in the girl’s testimony, which he said revealed that some of her stories of escapades with Daye were untrue. Fein said these were innocent misrecollections.
Both lawyers mentioned that the girl has a history of abuse and family troubles. When she was younger than 10, they said, she was sexually abused by several male relatives in the home of her mother, who was an alcoholic. She has since been through a family divorce and a custody battle.
“Understandably, and not unsympathetically, she was a messed-up kid,” Brown said.
Closing arguments lasted all day Friday, and the jury met for less than 45 minutes afterward before going home for the weekend.
Eight of Daye’s friends and relatives showed up in court Friday to support him.
