The defendants are Richmond Keybond, 20, and Joseph Saimon, 44. They were arrested in 2018 along with Christopher Saimon, 40, and the now-deceased Romeo Saimon.
Romeo, Christopher, and Joseph are brothers while Richmond is the son of Romeo.
Chief prosecutor John Bradley said Romeo took his own life last year, so his case was dismissed.
Christopher, for his part, was found to be incompetent to stand trial because of a mental disability, so his case was also dismissed.
On Wednesday, a jury was selected for the trial of Richmond Keybond and Joseph Saimon.
Keybond is represented by attorney Cong Nie while Saimon is represented by Assistant Public Defenders Jean Pierre Nogues and Emily Thomson.
The prosecutors are Assistant Attorneys General Coleen St. Clair and Heather Barcinas.
In her opening statement, St. Clair recounted the incident based on the statement provided by the alleged victim, Joseph’s former girlfriend.
On Sunday, June 24, 2018, the alleged victim had a disagreement with Joseph and left the Saimon family compound for a nearby store to borrow a phone so she could call her sister to pick her up.
She later returned to the Saimon family compound and decided to drink alcohol with Romeo and Keybond who was 18 at the time.
St. Clair said the alleged victim felt safe drinking with the father and son duo.
The alleged victim then recalled being in a bedroom and falling in and out of consciousness because she was highly intoxicated.
She also recalled that Romeo, Keybond, and Christopher took turns sexually assaulting her.
She then saw Joseph and Keybond in an altercation, adding that Joseph, who was upset, threw an ice chest at her and demanded that she leave.
Joseph called the alleged victim’s sister to take her home.
St. Clair said the alleged victim was so intoxicated that she could barely move or speak, but she managed to cover her naked self with a towel and eventually made her way to her sister’s vehicle.
The following day, on Monday, June 25, 2018, the alleged victim said Joseph showed up at her workplace and threatened to release nude photos of her if she did not go with him that instant.
Fearful, she complied and left with Joseph who later sexually assaulted her and told her to walk back to work afterward.
Revenge
Defense attorney Cong Nie, for his part, said the alleged victim was in denial and had “voluntary revenge sex” with Keybond after discovering Facebook messages between Joseph and his ex-girlfriend at the time.
Nie said the alleged victim was aware that Keybond was under the legal age to consume alcohol, but drank with him and Romeo anyway.
Nie said the alleged victim also had access to a phone and a vehicle at the Saimon family compound where she, Romeo, and Keybond drank, but she did not ask to call her sister nor did she ask for a ride to her sister’s home.
Instead, Nie said the trio went to the store to purchase more alcohol then drove to a beach to drink some more before returning to the Saimon family compound.
Nie said when the alleged victim had gone to the police station to file an official complaint, she did not say that she was going to report Keybond.
Assistant Public Defender Emily Thomson, in her opening statement, said Joseph did not rape the alleged victim, as he did not force or threaten her to have sex.
Thomson said the alleged victim chose to remain at the compound, not ask for a ride home, consume alcohol, purchase more alcohol, not report any alleged crime committed against her to the authorities or to anyone else, not seek medical attention, go to work, leave work to follow Joseph home, have sex with Joseph, and return to work.
Thomson said it was the alleged victim who had asked Joseph to go to her workplace in the first place on June 25, 2018.
Joseph, she said, was upset on the night of June 24, 2018 because he thought that the alleged victim had cheated on him with his nephew, Keybond.
He got into an altercation with Keybond, called the alleged victim’s sister, and demanded that the alleged victim leave the Saimon family compound.
Thomson said Joseph did not threaten the alleged victim with a machete or a knife or a weapon of any kind, but did threaten to post nude photos of the alleged victim.
She said her client had consensual sex with the alleged victim one last time before officially breaking off their relationship.
At that time, she said Joseph’s two sons were home and reported that they did not hear any crying or screaming coming from the room where Joseph and the alleged victim were.
It was only after conversing with her sister that the alleged victim chose to make an official complaint to local authorities, Thomson said.
Testimony
Officer Mark Cruzat, who has been on the force for two years, was the first witness to be called to testify during the trial.
In his testimony, Cruzat said in June 2018, he had only been on the job for a few weeks and was working the desk at the police station when the alleged victim and her sister arrived to file an official complaint.
He said he took handwritten notes as the alleged victim gave her statement.
Cruzat said the alleged victim was crying and trying to catch her breath, and he believed that a sexual assault crime had occurred.
He then proceeded to fill out an incident report based on his handwritten notes.
The defense argued that there is no way to prove that all of the information from the handwritten notes align with what was given in the official report because the officer had not provided the notes as evidence.
Superior Court Judge Teresa Kim-Tenorio ruled that these notes and notes of a similar nature must be provided by the prosecutor to the defense and the court.
The prosecution said no police misconduct was shown, to which the defense replied that police conduct was not in question, but rather the accuracy of the information provided in the incident report.
Cruzat said he did receive training on taking complaints and writing reports, and believes that he wrote the incident report to the best of his ability.
However, the defense said that nowhere in the report did the officer explicitly state that his interview with the alleged victim was interrupted.
The prosecution said although not explicitly stated, the officer did describe an interruption during his interview with the alleged victim —
an interruption that occurred when police detective Wally Emul Jr. entered the interview to speak with the alleged victim.
Nie said Emul had advised the alleged victim to go to the hospital to be tested.
The trial will resume today, Friday, at 8:30 a.m.
