|
|
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
Serving Seguin and Guadalupe County since 1888
|
|
|
Marketplace
Sections
Services
Service Center
|
|
 |
|
Marion man on trial for sex assault
Published April 15, 2009
SEGUIN — District Attorney Heather Hollub’s office began its second sexual assault trial in as many weeks Tuesday in a case in which a Marion man faces a possible life sentence over an alleged assault last August.
Randall Dale Douglas, 38, stands charged with aggravated sexual assault in an alleged day-long rampage at the home of a Marion woman. If convicted of aggravated sexual assault, Douglas, who was arrested by the Marion Police Department in the wake of the Aug. 25 incident, faces from five to 99 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Assistant District Attorney Larry Bloomquist opened the trial before 25th Judicial District Judge Dwight Peschel and a jury of eight men and four women with a description of the events that led up to the incident in question.
Douglas, who Bloomquist said had had a long-term relationship with the woman, had been in jail for several months before the assault was alleged to have taken place.
While he was in jail and in the weeks after his release, Bloomquist said Douglas became obsessed with the idea the victim had also had a relationship with another man, which the woman denied, the attorney said.
He became angered on Aug. 25, and in a day-long tirade, physically and sexually assaulted the woman — and repeatedly threatened to kill her, Bloomquist said.
“(She) is a prisoner in her own home and he’s hitting her,” Bloomquist told jurors. “He’s hitting her. He’s punching her, and it’s not pitty-pat punches. He’s punching her like you would punch a man, and he won’t let her out of the house. He’s beating her, he’s raping her, and he’s telling her this is the last day of her life.”
The incident occurred after the woman’s son went to school that day, and the woman was afraid not only for herself, but for the boy were he to return to the home after something terrible had happened.
“She complies with him because she’s afraid that if she upsets him in any way, her son is going to come home and find her dead,” Bloomquist said.
Defense attorney Elizabeth Jandt, who is representing Douglas with colleague Deborah Perry, then took her swing at the facts, telling jurors Bloomquist hadn’t presented the entire story.
While a lot of the background Bloomquist had outlined was true, she said, he had mischaracterized what had happened on the day in question.
“There was sex,” Jandt acknowledged, but it was consensual.
“You’ll hear both of them were drinking, and that she was drinking considerably more than she had said,” Jandt told the jurors. “You’re also going to hear that during this period in time, Mr. Douglas had decided that this relationship was not working, and that he had announced he was going to leave. She begged him not to leave. She told him, ‘You don’t know what I am capable of.’ Think about that.”
The bruises and other injuries noted by Marion Police Sgt. Jay Whiston were caused when the woman had stumbled or fallen over furniture.
There were also many inconsistencies in her story, Jandt said.
“She will say that if there was a weapon in the house she believed he would have killed her,” Jandt told jurors. “Some of these arguments took place in the kitchen. There were knives there, and he didn’t pick any of those up.”
The woman would also testify that she’d been locked into the house that day and was afraid she or her boy would be harmed had she fled.
“She said she had no way to run,” Jandt said. “That morning, she’d taken her son to school, and she had plenty of time to report this to the police station, but she was so frightened, she went back to the house.”
Later, he made her go to the Schertz public library so he could look at her telephone bills on the Internet to determine whether there were calls to the man Douglas believed the woman had been seeing.
“There were all types of opportunities for her to get out of the situation,” Jandt said.
Later, the woman reportedly used a ruse to get out of the house with the boy — telling Douglas she’d promised to take him out for ice cream. On that trip, she stopped at a convenience store where she found an EMS crew — and a Cibolo police officer. At the very same time, her father was reporting the situation to Whiston.
Tuesday, jurors heard the testimony of police officers involved in the case. The trial is expected to continue this week in Courtroom 300.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print |
Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|