SAN MARTIN
– After 12 strong-willed jurors deadlocked in a sex-crime trial
for Quintin Daye of Gilroy, the two lawyers worked out a bargain
that will set Daye free from jail on a misdemeanor plea.
SAN MARTIN – After 12 strong-willed jurors deadlocked in a sex-crime trial for Quintin Daye of Gilroy, the two lawyers worked out a bargain that will set Daye free from jail on a misdemeanor plea.
The jury split 8-4 in favor of acquittal Tuesday morning. In the afternoon, Deputy District Attorney Steve Fein made an offer to drop all five rape and sexual molestation charges if Daye would plead guilty to child endangerment, a misdemeanor that implies no sexual wrongdoing.
“The bottom line is the (offer) sickens me, but after talking to the jurors, I realized there was very little likelihood of getting a conviction,” Fein said afterward.
Daye agreed to the offer, although not without visible reluctance of his own as he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge. According to his lawyer, Craig Brown of San Jose, Daye says he is completely innocent.
“He’s relieved, obviously, that it’s over and relieved to be out of custody, but … there’s a part of him that thinks he shouldn’t have pleaded to anything, anytime,” Brown said after the trial.
Daye will be released from county jail at noon Friday to await his March 22 sentencing. Instead of the possible 48 years in prison for the five charges Daye was tried on, Judge Kenneth Shapero will give him time served in jail and four years of supervised probation. The maximum incarceration for child endangerment is six months. Daye has been jailed since July.
In addition, both lawyers agreed to two court-ordered restrictions: Daye will be banned from working or volunteering with minors and from contact with the 17-year-old girl who accused him of having sex with her hundreds of times between 1999 and 2002, starting when she was 13.
Shapero on Tuesday ordered Daye to also abide by these restrictions until his sentencing. Daye was a coach for two summers of a girls basketball traveling team.
Brown revealed that Fein made a similar offer at the beginning of the trial, before jury selection began. Daye “flat-out refused” it, Brown said.
He almost did again. The afternoon court session began an hour late because Brown was having trouble convincing Daye to accept the plea bargain.
To Brown, however, Tuesday afternoon’s outcome felt like a victory.
“We started out looking at a case of life in prison,” Brown said, referring to the prosecution’s original charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child, which carries a maximum life sentence. The charges brought to trial – sexual molestation of a child under the age of 14, continuous sexual molestation of a child and three counts of rape – carry a maximum of 48 years in prison, which for a 45-year-old man like Daye is virtually the same thing.
Daye’s younger brother, Selwyn, present for every minute of the trial, reacted emotionally after Tuesday’s final session.
“It’s a relief,” the 35-year-old Gilroy man said. “It’d be hard going through all this again just for another trial.”
Both Selwyn Daye and Brown pointed out that Quintin will have a hard time pulling his life back together after the ordeal he’s been through since his accuser went to police last year in January.
“Now he has nothing,” Selwyn said. “He has no house. He has no money. He has no job. He has nothing.”
Quintin Daye formerly worked for United Parcel Service, had a tax consulting business and took landscaping and construction jobs on the side, according to Brown.
At about 11 a.m. Tuesday, jurors returned to the courtroom and declared that they were hopelessly deadlocked. Shapero asked each in turn whether more time or rereading of the evidence would help break their impasse, but 11 of them said no. The 12th, Jason Marsh, 25, of San Jose, said anything was possible, but he doubted a consensus could be reached.
“We’ve all tried to sway each other,” the jury’s forewoman told Shapero. “We all have strong convictions.”
Shapero declared a mistrial and dismissed the jurors. During the recess that followed, many of them shared why they voted as they did.
“It was poorly presented … in terms of evidence,” said Marsh, who said he voted to acquit. “I felt, based on that, I couldn’t send the guy to prison. … they didn’t meet the burden of proof.”
Marsh said he was frustrated that some of his fellow jurors had expressed unshakable opinions as soon as deliberations began.
“They didn’t come in with an open mind,” Marsh said.
Audry Lynch, 70, of Saratoga, said she thought Daye was guilty. A doctor of psychology and a practicing school counselor, she said she based this judgment on her professional instincts, honed by life experience.
“He never met us in the eye,” Lynch said of Daye. “It seemed his testimony wasn’t honest and straightforward.
“I think a lot of the people who voted not guilty were a little young, a little inexperienced,” Lynch added. “They mostly work in high-tech fields. They want human nature pinned down to a set of definites, and human nature isn’t like that.”
The girl’s testimony, on the other hand, “had the ring of truth to me,” Lynch said.
Nevertheless, she added, “There wasn’t a lot of evidence either way.”
