This case was decided on September 8, 2009 by the Supreme Court, New York County involving a sex crime. The defendant as convicted of sodomy and other charges that involved bribery and false reports. A verdict in the sex crime charges related to one of the alleged victims was not reached, so an appeal was pending at that time.
This hearing concerned factors focused on by a motion that defense was not informed before the trial that DeMoya informed them that he had been involved in delivering weapons or other illegal substances. DeMoya told the prosecutor of his belief that the defendant purposely alerted the probation department in Connecticut that he was still involved in selling drugs.
This probation violation caused his arrest. Other information also came to the forefront that showed the severity of DeMoya’s deviant behavior, including using other drugs in addition to those he admitted to using in court, or in his part of assaulting a victim during a robbery. Other information about DeMoya’s criminal activity was also brought forth.
The Court found that the defendant did not prove that the trial was affected by misconduct by the prosecution and that there were not violations concerning due process simply because new information was discovered. The motion to overturn the judgment was denied.
The victim of this sex crime, Christopher Brook testified that the defendant began committing sex crimes against him when he was less than fourteen years old. The defendant said that it did not begin until he was of legal age, and DeMoya claimed that it began when Brook was about twelve years old, close to the time that he began attending the school that the defendant’s parents owned. The defendant continued to have a sexual relationship with Brook after he became an adult, and after their relationship ended, she used another name to make false complaints against him as a policeman. DeMoya testified that he was with the defendant during one of the phone calls, and that she wanted him to participate in it. Other false emergency calls to Brook’s residence. Brook was able to recognize the defendant’s voice in one of the calls. Shortly thereafter, he made a report that he had been the victim of a sex crime to his superior a few weeks later.
The search for another victim who was thought to have been abused by the defendant began. The school received a subpoena to search through student files to find this person. Paul DeMoya was found and the defendant took him to her lawyer’s office where he denied that he had had a sexual relationship with her. Shortly thereafter, DeMoya was arrested for a probation violation and admitted that the defendant had committed sex crimes against him as an underage victim. His mother, Paulino, requested that her son’s Connecticut probation violation Case would be quickly settled. DeMoya was sentenced to 8 months in Connecticut for this offense. The defendant claimed that DeMoya therefore had a motive for testifying against her since he believed that she was the cause of his arrest. The defendant also claimed that statements made in the closing argument by the prosecutor mislead the jury because they did not include the full criminal history of DeMoya. After examining the record, the Court found that the defense did argue that he was a violent thief, drug dealer, and that he habitually lied to his probation officer, mother, and grandparents.
The defense also stated that had DeMoya made his suspicions known before he testified, this may have put an entirely different light on the case. Records showed that the defendant made hundreds of phone calls attempting to reestablish a relationship with DeMoya, but that he was not interested in this. They argued that he may have lied against the defendant because of this as well in an attempt to ensure that she was out of his life.
The Court found no basis for claims that the prosecutors purposely misled the jury about DeMoya’s criminal activities and his admission of them after examining the trial record. Defense also argued that since DeMoya was able to leave prison to testify against her, he had reason to lie in his testimony. During his stay in a hotel, he was with detectives who were either in adjoining rooms on staying on the same floor, and he did not ask to leave the hotel.
Another complexity in this case was the issue that DeMoya and his mother were planning to file a lawsuit. Defense argued that they were knowingly misleading the jury because of their plan to do this. The Court found nothing that proved this. The defense also took issue with the fact that emails between the prosecution and DeMoya or Paulino were not given to the defense as they should have been. This issue could have been raised during the trial, but it was not. The Court stated that whether the court ruled appropriately on the email situation was not before the Court in this proceeding, and an appeal was filed in another hearing. It was found that whether or not the emails had been submitted to the prosecution, they would have had no bearing on the outcome of the trial. Most of the communication involved scheduling.
The Court found that the jury decided quickly that Brook was credible, and the bulk of the proceeding focused on the credibility of DeMoya, not of Brook. The prosecutor proved that the defendant took extraordinary risks, so it was not believable that she would not have engaged in the conduct Brook described due to fact that she may get caught. Concerning the criminal impersonation and false reporting counts, it was clear that the defendant was attempting to ruin Brook’s police career and harm him personally since their adult affair had ended. The defendant’s motion to vacate the judgment was denied in this case.