Case Dropped in Alleged Poway Rape; D.A. Gives No Details for Sudden Move

In a surprising development, a San Diego municipal judge dismissed all criminal charges Thursday against five illegal workers from Mexico who were arrested two months ago in connection with the alleged rape of a Poway teen-ager.

Judge Peter Riddle’s ruling in the racially charged case--which has attracted widespread publicity because of controversial investigative tactics employed by law-enforcement officers--came after prosecutors announced that the girl’s family had developed “information favorable to the defendants.”

“It is our belief that we are not in a position to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Przytulski said in a courtroom crowded with the defendants, their attorneys and five interpreters.

Przytulski added that the decision to dismiss the rape charges was made with “the complete concurrence” of the Sheriff’s Department and the parents of the teen-ager, who is pregnant.

Riddle then ordered the release of the four men and one woman, who have been held since late April in County Jail downtown in lieu of bail from $20,000 to $75,000. Charges against a sixth male, a minor, also were dismissed Thursday by a Juvenile Court judge.

Lawyer Silent on ‘Family Matter’

In an interview, Przytulski declined to elaborate on what information “favorable” to the defendants had been uncovered by the victim’s parents. “These people have some privacy rights, and this is a family matter,” he said.

When asked whether dismissal of the charges means a rape never occurred, the prosecutor said, “It means we don’t know whether one did or didn’t occur.”

He said that there are no more suspects in the case and that the investigation has been closed.

Thursday’s action came three days after the man suspected of the alleged rapist, Leonardo Martinez Cedillo, 21, agreed to provide blood samples for comparison with blood taken from the fetus, which was to be aborted. Robert Carriedo, an attorney representing Martinez, said testing was scheduled for Thursday but never occurred.

“He was perfectly willing to submit to the tests,” Carriedo said. “He wanted to submit to them. He has cooperated with the investigation from Day 1.”

Riddle’s dismissal of the charges is the latest chapter in a case that began the evening of April 24 when the 15-year-old girl said she was forced off her horse in an alley behind a Poway market by eight men and a woman, then raped by one of the men. The teen-ager described her assailant as a small man in his 20s with dark hair and dark eyes.

Based on that description, 12 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 27 deputies from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department launched a massive sweep, targeting migrant farm laborers and other Latinos working in the semi-rural northern San Diego County area.

Nearly 90 suspects--some of them middle-aged and elderly and some identified as legal residents--were detained and questioned during the dragnet, in which 17 members of the Sheriff’s SWAT Team also participated.

Sweep Was Assailed

The sweep was immediately condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union, a Latino rights group and owners of several Poway businesses whose employees were picked up. These critics charged that the sweep amounted to a discriminatory roundup that violated the suspects’ civil rights.

They later speculated that the unusual tactics were used because the girl’s father is a sheriff’s deputy and both her mother and step-mother also work in law enforcement.

On Thursday, critics of the Sheriff’s Department said they hope that the case’s outcome will persuade law-enforcement officers to reconsider their approach to investigations involving suspects described as Latino. They also speculated that the district attorney’s action indicated that there was never a rape at all and said prosecutors should have shown more restraint.

“The Poway incident is another example of the hysteria that tends to take over in North County when something like this happens,” said Roberto Martinez, chairman of the Coalition for Law and Justice. “I would hope this would be a lesson that you should not panic before all the evidence is in.”

Edmundo Espinoza, a lawyer for the coalition, said a lawsuit will be filed next week on behalf of some of those detained in the April sweep. Espinoza said the complaint will include allegations of false imprisonment, illegal detention, false arrest and assault and battery, and will name San Diego County, the Sheriff’s Department and individual officers.

‘Picked Up Every Hispanic’

“They went out, picked up every Hispanic they could find, packed them into vans, drove around for a while and then held them for a few hours,” Espinoza said. “Some were beaten up . . . and all were treated terribly. There’s every civil-rights violation you could imagine here.”

Sgt. Bob Takeshta, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, defended the department’s handling of the case and said the sweep was useful in developing the identities of the suspects finally arrested. He said there are no plans to re-evaluate the tactics employed in the investigation.

After Thursday’s court session, attorneys representing some of the defendants said their clients are relieved and happy that their ordeal has ended--despite the fact that several may be turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation.

But the defense attorneys, who said prosecutors told them nothing more about the abrupt turn of events than was disclosed in court, were clearly angry that the charges had ever been filed.

“He is a gardener, a sweet, young man who couldn’t understand why he’d been locked up for something he had absolutely nothing to do with,” attorney Carol Frausto said of her client, Jose Romero, 20. “He’s glad it’s over. But he had been in the process of applying for amnesty, and there’s no telling how this will affect his chances.”

Attorney Josephine Dedina, who represented the female suspect, 18-year-old housecleaner Monica Arce Acevedo, said the Sheriff’s Department “clearly should have investigated this case a lot more thoroughly before bringing these charges.”

Defendant ‘Lovely Young Lady’

“My client is a lovely young lady with some college education and a lot of self-respect who could not conceive of why she would ever be charged for this crime,” Dedina said. “It’s very upsetting for her. These people have lost two months of their lives.”

Both Frausto and Dedina said they had encouraged their clients to file lawsuits against San Diego County in connection with the episode. They added that their defense investigators had interviewed many people about the alleged rape and had come up with some “powerful” information. They declined to disclose any details.

The other two suspects in the case were Guadalupe Cedillo Martinez, a field laborer, and Jorge Luis Mendez Herrera. The minor was not identified.

Besides angering civil-rights groups, the alleged crime and subsequent investigation aggravated tensions between migrant workers and the mostly white homeowners of North County. In recent years, some residents have come to view aliens as responsible for much of the community’s crime, and the Poway episode became a symbol of their fears.

Jerry Hargarten, community protection chairman for a civic group in north Poway, said dismissal of the rape charges simply proves that “the system is working properly to protect the innocent.” Hargarten said he was glad “justice was served,” but he defended the Sheriff Department’s actions and disagreed that their conduct was racially discriminatory.

“There is no race issue here,” Hargarten said. “The problems we have are not caused because they are Chicano (sic) but because they are itinerants. It would be the same if they were yellow or black or white itinerants.”