After deliberating for about six hours over a two-day span, jurors hit a stalemate Thursday afternoon in the case of a Vancouver man accused of raping a teenaged girl and fleeing to Cambodia last year to avoid prosecution.
Jurors heard three days of testimony, which included the alleged victim and defendant, but apparently were not swayed beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence.
Ian Andrew Heller, 25, was on trial in Clark County Superior Court for allegedly raping the girl, whom he knew, when she was 13 and 14 years old. He faced two counts of second-degree child rape, two counts of third-degree child rape and bail jumping.
The jury returned to the courtroom shortly after 1 p.m. to ask what to do if they couldn’t reach an unanimous decision. They had asked a similar question earlier that morning. Judge Gregory Gonzales decided to call a mistrial.
A retrial is scheduled for July 6. Efforts to reach Deputy Prosecutor Patrick Robinson were unsuccessful Thursday.
Heller’s defense attorney, Bob Vukanovich, said he was hoping for a not-guilty verdict but said he would take the hung jury.
“I felt very strongly that we had some good evidence that this young lady’s credibility was brought into question,” he said. “This was the kind of case that we don’t have any hard evidence. It’s a ‘he-said, she-said’ so it’s really based on credibility.”
During Wednesday’s closing arguments, Vukanovich said his client was being falsely accused of child rape. He argued the girl fabricated the rape story, following a “mooning” incident involving Heller, his then-girlfriend, the alleged victim and her male friend. Heller apparently was upset with the male friend after he “mooned” his then-girlfriend while she was sleeping. Heller said he reported the incident to police.
The alleged victim had testified that Heller raped her 20 to 30 times between the summer of 2011 and April 2012. She said she waited to report it because she was afraid of getting into trouble.
Vukanovich said there were many inconsistencies in the girl’s testimony and in her statements during interviews. Her time line of events also didn’t match up with other witnesses’ testimony, he said.
Robinson acknowledged some inconsistencies but said they don’t take away from the alleged victim’s credibility. He argued they are proof that she wasn’t using a rehearsed story.
He also argued that Heller fleeing to Cambodia is a sign of his “conscious guilt.”
Heller was apprehended last year by local police in the Preah Sihanouk province for having an “illegal expired passport,” according to The Cambodia Daily.
Clark County sheriff’s deputies picked him up Sept. 30 when he arrived in Los Angeles.
