State v. Mr. P (DMC number 16287) – Felony Sexual Assault – Paradise Valley Police Department investigated (DR No. 20XX–XXXXXXX3).
Mr. P was an 18-year-old man when he retained our services regarding an allegation of Sexual Assault. Mr. P, a high school student at the time, was being accused by another high school student of raping her at a high school party. She claimed that Mr. P brought her inside the home of the party against her will and had sex with her without her consent and while she was telling him “no”. She says this had happened at a party approximately a month and a half before her report. She told Police she was not pregnant and that she had taken a pregnancy test and also took a Plan B pill.
Upon retaining our firm, the Pre-Charge Team immediately met and began taking action. We first drafted and sent a Trebus letter to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, notifying them of our representation and notifying them that if the case was presented to a Grand Jury, that Mr. P would like to be present to testify, if they chose to hear from him. We also reached out to a contact at the young man’s school, to determine what action would be taken if police showed up there to interview Mr. P. We obtained the official protocol of the school and informed Mr. P and his family of the same.
We submitted a Public Records Request to get a copy of the Police report and reached out to the Detective, to speak with him regarding the allegations and our client. We immediately scheduled a Polygraph examination for our client and drafted the questions to be asked during that examination. Those questions focused on whether there was any non-consensual sexual conduct with the alleged victim and whether there was any forced sexual contact. The results of the Polygraph showed that no deception was indicated. We also retained the services of a Private Investigator to interview the other people who were at the party the night of this alleged rape. The Private Investigator conducted those interviews, focusing on claims of intoxication of Mr. P or the young girl making the accusations, and whether anybody saw or heard anything suspicious that evening. This Private Investigator also contacted Mr. P’s ex-girlfriend to testify that he was never aggressive sexually.
After obtaining all of the information from the Private Investigator and our own independent research, we began drafting a detailed Trebus Bashir letter to submit to the Detective, for his review and determination of whether he would submit the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for charging. This 10 page letter, not including the exhibits, had 112 bullet points delineating Mr. P’s denial of the accusations, a description of what occurred that evening and the days after the sexual contact, and our believed motive for the false allegations. Specifically, our investigation found that approximately a week after the consensual intercourse, Mr. P received a text message from his accuser, telling him that she believed she was pregnant. After a number of text messages back and forth regarding what they would do if she was, Mr. P was notified that she was not pregnant. At this time, she asked for $50 to pay for the Plan B pill. At no point in time during the text messages, just a week after their consensual sex act, did she claim that she was “raped”, or that Mr. P did anything inappropriate.
After submitting this letter to the Paradise Valley Police Department along with the relevant attachments, the Detective declined to submit the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for review.