Former Garden Grove police officer Jesse Andrew Green wiped his eyes as a five-man, seven-woman jury read his verdict today: guilty of forced sodomy on three women he dated.
The jury deadlocked on a fourth felony count against the 35-year-old Huntington Beach resident, who lost his job in November 2010, seven weeks after being charged with the sick crimes against two of the women.
]
Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals declared a mistrial on the rape charge. Green faces between nine and 24 years in prison at his sentencing scheduled for Nov. 22.
City News Service reporter Paul Anderson, who was in court for the verdict, reports supporters of Green yelled at the female victims as the ex-cop learned his fate, with Goethals admonishing one man for saying, “Keep laughing.”
“You're my hero, Jess,” another reportedly said as Green was led away in handcuffs. “Love you, bro.”
Green called his victims names and told them he gave them sexually transmitted diseases during and after the assaults. John Barnett, the Orange County attorney who earns large for representing just about every scummy cop in Southern California, told jurors Green's accusers are liars.
The defense seemed to have going for it the fact some of the women dated Green after their encounters with him. Barnett said things in court like “the alleged victims are calling and dating the alleged rapist and sodomizer,” and that one of the women later called his client with “a happy birthday to my rapist.”
But Deputy District Attorney Eric Scarbrough* successfully convinced jurors these were classic date rapes. By a nut, from the sounds of it. Green would be the nicest guy in the world before and after the rapes and a monster during. When one woman asked him to wear a condom, he raped her and told her he'd just given her AIDS. After consensual sex with another, he flipped her around against her will and sodomized her. (*See my comment below based on an email explaining the change of prosecutors mid-trial.)
It was Green's drastic demeanor change that had the women confused as to whether they were overreacting, jurors were told.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.