Deadlock ends child-rape trial of ex-officer
WENATCHEE – A Chelan County jury deliberated for three and half hours Thursday before announcing it could not reach a verdict in the case of a former police officer accused of raping the 11-year-old daughter of his fiancee.
The panel declared a hopeless deadlock at 7:30 p.m., leading Superior Court Judge Alicia Nakata to rule it a mistrial and set a hearing to revisit the status of the case May 20.
The jury of five men and seven women had been asked to contemplate the case against Scottie Leath Arms, 44, a former Colville city police officer. The alleged victim, now 13, told her story from the witness stand Wednesday, but Chelan County Prosecutor Douglas Shae could offer no physical evidence or witnesses to the crime.
Arms’ attorney, Brandon Redal, said his client is disappointed the three-day trial didn’t end with his acquittal.
“He can’t disprove what’s been alleged – factually, it’s impossible,” Redal said. “But I think he’s relieved that at least some jurors felt that an allegation, standing on its own, isn’t enough.”
Shae said Friday his office will examine the possibilities for a retrial ahead of the May 20 hearing, and confer with the child’s family.
“Like any case, you have to evaluate and take a look at it, and try not to make a decision in the moment,” he said.
Arms is accused of sexually assaulting the child Jan. 19, 2014, in the Wenatchee home he sometimes shared with her mother. The girl said Arms assaulted her digitally on the couch, while her mother was out of town and neighborhood adults watched the Seahawks’ 2014 NFC Championship game at another house.
“He was a man that I trusted,” the girl told the jury.
Arms and the girl’s mother had been dating for four years and had planned for Arms and his own children to move into the Wenatchee home by June 2014. The relationship ended with Arms’ arrest last May.
The child told her mother and a friend about the incident that same day, but her mother did not report the claim to police or child welfare investigators. In court, she testified that she feared the breakup of her family.
“She tried to protect what she had,” Shae told the jury. “We all have something – we all have maybe family, friends, something like that. Trying to protect what you have is not unusual for people to do.”
The girl’s allegation did not come to light until April 2014, when one of the girl’s friends involved a school guidance counselor who summoned Child Protective Services.
Arms did not testify, but jurors watched an edited video of his pre-arrest interview with Chelan County sheriff’s investigators. In that interview, Arms told detectives he never touched the girl inappropriately and couldn’t recall being alone with her on the weekend of the alleged assault. He also said the child had been acting out over plans to co-habit and blend the two families.
Redal further argued the assault was unlikely because it was alleged to have taken place in the front living room, on a sofa immediately visible from the front door and a nearby bathroom. Children were playing video games in a TV room and adults came in and out of the house to pick up alcohol for the football party, according to witness testimony.
“A police officer, who’s investigated crimes of this nature – if he was some sort of predator, wouldn’t he have called her into another room?” Redal asked the jury. “Another room with a door?”
Shae reminded jurors the child’s allegations have been consistent since she first accused Arms.
“I want you to remember the testimony of, really, one of two people who were at this particular scene that day, and that was (the child),” Shae said in his closing argument. “It really comes down to her, on that couch.”