The so-called “rape cops” live to fight another day.
The five women, seven-man jury in the sensational — and legally tricky — case failed to reach a verdict after batting the charges around for five hours today, their first day of deliberations. They’re set to continue their efforts tomorrow.
Officer Kenneth Moreno, 43, and his alleged lookout partner, Officer Franklin Mata, 29, are accused of conspiring in Moreno’s on-duty rape of a drunken, semi-conscious 27-year-old fashion executive.
The two officers had been dispatched to help out of a cab outside her East Village apartment when she arrived home intoxicated on a December pre-dawn morning in 2008.
Jurors are also considering charges of burglary for the cops’ caught-on-video return visits to the woman’s building. Sidewalk surveillance footage captures them using the woman’s key to let themselves back inside the woman’s East Village apartment a total of three additional times over the next four hours after their initial summoning to her door.
There are also additional felonies and misdemeanors for allegedly fudging records to cover their tracks — a total of 15 charges in all.
So far, jurors have asked to review audio-tape evidence that each side has claimed as helpful to their case: a secretly recorded confrontation between the woman and Moreno in which he repeatedly denies there was sex, but also at two points says he used a condom, that things “got a little crazy,” and that it was “only me,” not Mata, who had sex with her.