DISGRACE: NYPD Officer Michael Pena, in court yesterday, was convicted of a gunpoint sex assault and is awaiting a verdict on rape charges. (
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The drunken, off-duty cop who pulled his service weapon on a school teacher in a horrific, random sex attack in upper Manhattan is facing life in prison after a jury found him guilty yesterday of three counts of predatory sexual assault.
Michael Pena also was convicted of sexually violating the young woman — a stranger who had been en route to her first day working as a second-grade teacher when the boozed-up cop pulled her into an Inwood back yard and told her he’d shoot her in the face if she screamed or opened her eyes.
Pena was immediately fired after the partial verdict.
He’ll face anywhere from the mandatory minimum of 10 years up to life in prison at his yet-scheduled sentencing.
Jurors came to a decision on some of the charges yesterday, but they will continue to deliberate today on four counts involving Pena’s alleged rape of the terrified young teacher.
While agreeing that Pena otherwise violated the woman sexually, the jurors have been deadlocked since Monday on whether he actually raped her
Defense lawyer Ephraim Savitt has argued that there are no conclusive forensics confirming intercourse. But the woman’s DNA was on Pena’s genitals, and Pena’s DNA was on the woman’s underwear. Also, one passer-by testified that what he witnessed was definitely intercourse.
Then there was the compelling testimony of the 25-year-old victim herself, who tearfully insisted to jurors that she was certain she’d been raped because, she said, “It hurt.”
The petite, bespectacled brunette burst into gasping sobs yesterday as she sat in the courtroom, surrounded by friends and family members, and the forewoman said that the jury had yet to reach a verdict on two predatory-sexual-assault charges connected to the alleged rape.
Deliberations were temporarily derailed yesterday when it was revealed that juror No. 2 — ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s legal adviser Lloyd E. Constantine — had donated $5,000 to Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., whom he also knew socially, and is a law partner to the DA’s former campaign opponent, Richard Aborn, to whom he and his wife donated a total of $9,500.
Constantine claimed he’d said nothing of these ties for fear of being seen as trying to get out of jury duty. He was allowed to resume deliberations after asserting he was objective.
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland and Liz Sadler