Some of the location details provided by a teenage girl who accused two disgraced ex-NYPD detectives of kidnapping and rape may become an issue for prosecutors during the upcoming trial, the former cops' attorneys said today.
As the attorneys for Richard Hall and Eddie Martins are gearing up for jury selection during the first week of November, prosecutors turned over more evidence to the defense that they said could perjure the victim.
In September 2017, the victim—known under the pseudonym “Anna Chambers”—reported to authorities that while she was under arrest for marijuana possession, Hall and Martins placed her in the back of a van and drove from Coney Island to Bay Ridge while taking turns sexually assaulting her as she remained handcuffed.
Defense attorneys Mark Bederow, Michael Bibb and Peter Guadagnino received records from their clients’ cell phones showing the former detectives were not near Bay Ridge during the September 15th incident.
The police report also states, "The cell towers also have a radius which could give false sense of location."
“The allegations are that these men took the complaining witness on a ‘ride from hell’ and drove by locations including the address...of her grandmother’s house and the prosecution knew the witness’s statements in the grand jury were perjury,” Bederow told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun in court on Thursday.
The police records showed that based on the time-frame of the incident, Hall and Martins did not leave the vicinity of Calvert Vaux Park and drive five miles past the victim’s grandmother’s home.
“They (prosecutors) cannot ethically call her as a witness because it supports perjury,” argued Bederow. “They know it’s false and they’ve known it the whole time.”
During the “several minutes” in the van, the victim said Martins blocked his number to call one of her friends and tell him not to follow them. The police report confirmed that Martins used his personal cell phone and blocked the number to make two calls in the Coney Island area to the victim’s friend.
Hall, 33, and Martins, 38, claim they had consensual sex with the teen. At the time, this was a legal defense, but in March of this year, NY State passed a law explicitly prohibiting police officers from have sex with detainees.
The pair resigned from the NYPD a week after Brooklyn prosecutors indicted them in a 50-count indictment. The top charge is forcible rape that, if convicted, the former cops face up to 25 years in prison.
The victim’s attorney, Michael David, said the allegations were “another attack” against his client whose “last concern” was where she was as she was “brutally raped.”
“They are making up stories just to shame and attack her...She doesn’t have a GPS on her. She was in the back of a van, being brutally raped by these two savages and she is not supposed to know where she is,” said David.
Bederow also charged that the victim gave inconsistent testimony during hearings for her $50 million civil lawsuit and the allegations that nine other police officers tried to intimidate her from reporting the attack were “unsubstantiated.”
“We want justice, we can’t wait for the trial and for the truth to come out,” said David.
Christina Carrega is a Brooklyn native who dedicated her journalism career to telling stories surrounding the criminal justice system. When Christina's not reporting hard news, she writes for a lifestyle website she co-founded called 32Letter.com and enjoys traveling.
