Three men were sentenced Thursday to time they’ve already served in jail for having sex with two high school senior girls who were intoxicated at a party in Vancouver in March 2012. At the time of the men’s arrest, the victims alleged that the men gang raped them, according to court papers.
In an agreement with prosecutors, Tristan B. Rice, 21, of Battle Ground, Jordan S. Williams, 21, of Vancouver and Brandon D. Brinley, 22, of Vancouver pleaded guilty in Clark County Superior Court on Thursday to gross misdemeanor fourth-degree assault, a dramatic reduction from original Class A felony charges of second-degree rape.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Camara Banfield said the state offered to settle the case because of weaknesses in their evidence, which did not result from any fault by investigators.
“This is a case where I don’t think anyone can claim these girls said no, but from the statement from just one of the defendants alone, we knew these victims were not in any capacity to give consent,” Banfield said. “We have descriptions of them stumbling within 15 minutes of arriving at this party from the intake of alcohol and possibly marijuana.”
“We have a situation where there was a time when they were willing participants,” she added. “There definitely was a time when there was no act of participation.”
The defendants’ defense attorneys claimed that the girls concocted the rape story because someone at the party told them that someone had filmed them having sex with multiple partners. In fact, no such footage ever came to light, the attorneys said.
Brinley’s attorney, Bob Yoseph, said there were text messages between the girls in which they apparently were planning their sexual escapades at the party.
“After a pretty thorough investigation by the sheriff’s office and the attorneys involved in this case, it was the professional judgment of all of the lawyers involved that this wasn’t a provable rape case,” said Williams’ attorney, Steven Thayer.
Rice’s attorney, Jon McMullen, said the men likely would have been acquitted of rape at trial but were unwilling to take the risk of a felony conviction, which would have involved several years of jail time.
The girls’ fathers said that the sexual encounters have devastated their families. The girls had to take anti-HIV drugs for a month and have lingering emotional scars.
Judge Scott Collier sentenced Williams to the 40 days he already spent in jail at the time of his arrest in November 2013. Rice and Brinley were sentenced to the 30 days and four days, respectively, they already spent in jail when they also were arrested in November 2013. They faced up to 364 days in jail for the assault.
The two victims claimed they were raped repeatedly during a party late March 28 and early March 29 in 2012 at Rice’s then-residence, 7905 N.E. 140th Ave. in Vancouver, according to court papers.
The girls arrived at the party together at about 10:30 p.m. March 28 and, together, drank a total of about three-fourths of a fifth of vodka, which they had brought to the party. They claimed that the men had sex with them while they were intoxicated and unable to consent. The men claimed that the sexual relations were consensual.
