WOODLAND — Jurors in a rape case involving two former UC Davis students ended their second full day of deliberations Friday without yet reaching a verdict.
It marks the second trial for 26-year-old Lang Her, whose first jury split 8-4 in favor of acquittal last May on charges that he raped an intoxicated and unconscious woman in his apartment on the morning of July 10, 2012.
Relatives and friends of both Her and his alleged victim, identified in court by the initials Y.X., nearly filled Yolo Superior Court Judge Paul Richardson’s courtroom last Wednesday as attorneys in the case delivered their closing arguments following the two-week trial.
“She trusted him, and he took something away from her that he had no right to take away from her,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven said of Her and his alleged victim, both members of UCD’s Hmong community who had been friends prior to the incident.
The felony charges allege that Y.X.’s intoxicated and unconscious state prevented her from resisting and giving legal consent, and that Her knew or should have known of her condition at the time. He also faces a felony sexual battery charge.
The defense, meanwhile, has maintained that Y.X. lied about the encounter — which Her claims was “absolutely consensual” — and that she cried rape as part of a summer performance class at UCD.
“She couldn’t go back. She was stuck in the story,” Her’s lawyer, Christopher Carlos, told the eight-man, four-woman jury. “False allegations happen.”
Carlos also claims that law enforcement conducted a shoddy investigation in the case, improperly collecting some of the physical evidence and taking months and even years to contact some of the trial’s witnesses.
Both sides agree on some main facts:
On the night of July 9, 2012, Her hosted a party for some friends at his North Davis apartment. The group played several drinking games that caused Y.X. to become heavily intoxicated, after which Her and another friend took her upstairs to sleep it off in Her’s roommate’s bed.
That’s where the stories diverge.
On the witness stand, Y.X., now 23, recalled waking up in the darkened bedroom at about 3 a.m. to “a very sharp pain. … Somebody was having sex with me without my consent.”
The person got up and illuminated a cell phone, revealing Her as the alleged assailant, the woman testified. She disclosed the incident to fellow students later that morning and filed a police report the next day.
Confronted by Y.X. in a recorded phone call and questioned by investigators with Davis police and Student Judicial Affairs at UCD, Her denied any sexual contact with the woman until a Department of Justice analysis revealed DNA on a pantyliner and on a vaginal swab that matched Her’s genetic profile.
Following that revelation, Her testified at his first trial, and again last week, that he had consensual contact with Y.X.
He said he had gone to check on his friend in the upstairs bedroom, “and that’s when she put her arms around me and she brought me in and she kissed me.” Her was unable to maintain an erection, however, so the two did not engage in sex, he said.
Her attributed the DNA discovery to pre-ejaculate during a point of the encounter when both were partially unclothed.
Asked by his own attorney and again under cross-examination why he omitted those details for so long, Her said he feared authorities “would twist it around and say I had inadvertently admitted to the sexual assault. … You hear stories about rape on campus, and it’s not very favorable to the accused.”
Her’s story “has changed over and over again like a chameleon on a color wheel … so that nothing bad would happen to him,” Raven said in his closing remarks, noting that Y.X.’s statements remained consistent throughout the case.
Carlos acknowledged his client erred in not disclosing the consensual act, but said Her shouldn’t be convicted for it.
“She absolutely is lying” and did so for the attention, he said of the alleged victim. “Buyer’s remorse does not equal rape.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene