Michael Pena (T Parisienne / Splash News)
She knows what he’s charged with — and she still loves him.
The petite and pretty brunette fianceé of accused ‘rape’ cop Michael Pena tried to humanize the alleged fiend in testimony at his predatory sex attack trial today — insisting he’s the kind of guy who enjoys family movies, cute cat videos and adorable nicknames.
“Do you know the nature of the charges against Mr. Pena?” defense lawyer Ephraim Savitt asked Alma Rodriguez, 24, a citizen of the Dominican Republic.
“Si,” the rail-thin, almost adolescent-looking woman answered in a sweet, childlike voice. A translator told the jury that the answer was “Yes.”
Pena, of the 33rd Precinct in Washington Heights, is accused of pulling his service pistol on a terrified 24-year-old schoolteacher after a night of drinking back in August, and stripping and raping her on a picnic table in an Inwood backyard.
“As you sit here today, you testify you are still his fianceé?” the lawyer asked Rodriguez, who told jurors she’d been engaged to the cop since 2010, when they began living together in a Yonkers apartment.
“Si,” she answered softly.
“And you still care for and love Michael Pena?” the lawyer asked.
“Si,” she repeated.
Pena called his fianceé “Moi,” meaning “My little love,” his pet name for her, during the hours before his arrest, Rodriguez said. She was not asked about Pena’s other smart phone activities from that night. Pena had trolled Craigslist for XXX-rated personal ads, and flirted with two other women he knew, according to prior testimony.
Rodriguez scurried silently from the courtroom on high heels — wearing big dark glasses, her face swaddled in a scarf — after telling jurors that throughout the day before the alleged attack, she and her husband-to-be enjoyed watching “Karate Kid”, a cat video and “vaginal” sex.
Prosecutor Evan Krutoy used his brief cross-examination of Rodriguez to clarify that Pena was able to penetrate her during sex. Pena is trying to outrun the top charges of rape and predatory sex attack by insisting that while he did attack and molest the schoolteacher, he did not actually penetrate her, and so couldn’t be convicted of those two top charges.
There is no eyewitness or forensic testimony conclusively establishing that Pena’s actions meet the statutory requirements for intercourse, Savitt argued in closing statements that began before lunch.
“The defense in this case is a very technical defense,” Savitt told jurors.
“He did a terrible thing. He did an unforgivable thing. But did he commit the rape? Well not as it’s designed by the New York State statute.”
Prosecutors will likely argue that Pena — who was linked to the victim by her DNA swabbed from his own body and his DNA swabbed from her underwear — is well implicated by the eyewitness accounts of the movements of Pena’s body during the assault. One eyewitness told jurors that although he stood 12 feet away, he was certain he witnessed intercourse.
Then there is the victim’s own testimony, in which she said she knew she had been violated. “It hurt,” she tearfully told jurors.