Defense lawyers in the so-called “Rape Cops” case tried again today to portray the alleged victim as a veteran drinker — getting a prosecution witness to admit the petite young woman knew how to “pound it.”
“She could ‘pound it,’ so to speak, correct?” defense lawyer Joseph Tacopina asked the witness
“For me, it just means she could drink a lot and hold it together,” the witness, Pedro Vidallon, explained.
“Did she drink five red bull and vodkas often in one night?” the lawyer continued — a reference to just some of the alcohol her friends remember the woman drinking on the night of the alleged rape.
“Once in a while,” Vidallon conceded.
Accused rapist Officer Kenneth Moreno and his partner and accused lookout, Officer Franklin Mata, deny any sex took place on the night in December, 2008 when they were dispatched to the drunken fashion executive’s East Village address to help her out of a cab.
But the cops aren’t taking any chances with the jury.
Charged with rape under the theory that the woman was too passed out to consent, they are trying to show that while she was indeed drunk — her blood alcohol hovered around .20, well over twice the legal limit — she was not so drunk that she couldn’t agree to sex.
“Did she appear to have a drinking problem?” prosecutor Randolph Clarke asked Vidallon on redirect.
“No,” the friend answered.
The cops were caught on sidewalk surveillance video using the woman’s key to make three return visits to the apartment building; Moreno has insisted he was just being “helpful.”
There are no forensics directly linking the cops to any sexual act. But Moreno admitted in a taped conversation with the woman that he wore a condom — though he also contradicts that assertion by repeatedly denying, on the same tape, that anything happened.
A prosecution expert has told jurors that a slight bruise to the victim’s cervix is consistent with her account of being attacked while prone on her stomach.
The trial is in its fourth week of testimony.