Michael Delgado, who could have won Ugly Police Mugshot of the Week honors from the Weekly had the Fullerton 300-pounder not been smoked by first-ballot Ugly Police Mugshot of the Week Hall of Famer Marten Joseph Brandel, had his rape case tossed.
On Monday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Steven Bromberg dismissed all charges against Delgado, much to the tears-streaming delight of the 27-year-old and his family sitting behind him.
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Bromberg declared a mistrial Jan. 31 after a jury deadlocked 8-4 in favor of acquitting Delgado, who was accused of answering a craigslist ad from a maid and then raping her when she showed up in June 2011 to clean his apartment. Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney disclosed at the time he would retry the case.
Delgado hired the 42-year-old woman for housecleaning
services in his apartment in a
gated complex in the 1500 block of Brea Boulevard, where he greeted her at the front door that fateful morning. Her version of the story is that as Delgado escorted her past
several
security doors leading into his abode, she became spooked and asked to
leave. He was alleged to have then pinned her 5-foot-3, 120 lbs. frame to the ground before forcibly
raping her, fingering her and forcing her to give him head over the next hour.
The Orange County District Attorney's office later charged Delgado with two felony counts of forcible rape, two
felony counts of forcible oral copulation, one felony count of sexual
penetration by foreign object and one felony count of false
imprisonment by violence. Conviction could have had him compromising prison-bunk springs for 40 years.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.