Ajury of nine women and three men took less than a day of deliberation to find former UCSB soccer player Eric Frimpong guilty of rape, leaving a 19-year-old victim relieved the trial is over and a group of Frimpong’s supporters wondering what went wrong.
The jury gathered in the jury room briefly on Friday, December 14, before Superior Court Judge Brian Hill sent them home early for the weekend. By 3:30 p.m. Monday, a verdict had been reached. Despite the amount of evidence presented, prosecutor Mary Barron wasn’t surprised by the length of time the jury took to come to a conclusion. “I thought the evidence was very strong in this case,” said Barron, who on Friday called the evidence “unrelenting.” The judge took a poll of the jury after the verdict was read, asking each individual if they agreed with the finding. All of the jurors, some of them crying and emotional, said yes. “It was hard because none of us wanted it to be that way,” one juror said later. The victim wasn’t in the courtroom Monday for the verdict, but the small contingent of people who have been by Frimpong’s side were, including Paul Monahan, who has paid for much of Frimpong’s legal defense. Monahan’s son, Patrick, was a roommate with Frimpong at UCSB. When the verdict was read, Paul Monahan’s wife burst out, “It’s not right.” And then Frimpong was led off in handcuffs to begin his sentence, the length of which will be determined January 31 when Hill will decide if the Ghana native will serve three, six, or the maximum eight years behind bars. The defense will be appealing the outcome, although on what grounds isn’t clear. Defense attorney Bob Sanger filed multiple motions for mistrials throughout the case, based on apparent prosecutor missteps along the way. A motion for a retrial has already been filed, according to Monahan and Tim Vom Steeg, UCSB’s soccer coach. Sanger didn’t return multiple calls to his office before deadline. “When you take the testimony and information and when you put it together, it was very consistent,” Dougherty said.
In his closing arguments, Sanger explained why he called only one witness and why he didn’t have Frimpong testify. “The evidence is so faulty and such a mess, we’re stopping,” he said, adding that stacking remote possibility on top of remote possibility doesn’t prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, as the court requires. But the jury disagreed, finding a “pattern” to the evidence presented, said jury foreperson Jim Dougherty. “When you take the testimony and information and when you put it together, it was very consistent,” Dougherty said.