Court moves outside to inspect car
Honda alleged to be a crime site
By Bobbi Mlynar
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Jurors trooped over to the county’s enclosed parking lot Tuesday afternoon to look at a 1991 Honda Civic, where sexual intercourse allegedly took place between Raul Manuel Magallanez Jr. and underaged girls.
Magallanez is on trial on charges of raping a 13-year-old, rape of girls between 14 and 16 years of age, aggravated sodomy, indecent liberties with a minor, furnishing alcohol to a minor for illicit purposes, and one count of aggravated intimidation of a witness.
The car has been described as a site where sexual intercourse took place between the defendant and two under-aged girls.
The car had been towed to the enclosed parking lot by Magallanez’s defense team. It had been seized in December 2006 during a search warrant by the Emporia Police Department and taken to the police basement for processing. Deputy Chief Mike Williams later released the vehicle.
Jeff Cope, head of courthouse security, demonstrated for the jury how far back the reclining portion of the seat would go and whether the seat itself could be moved forward or backward.
The seat was positioned near the back seat. During the demonstration, Cope could not move the seat base along the tracks. He had no difficulty reclining the back of the driver’s seat onto the seat behind.
The demonstration interrupted testimony of a young woman who said she had purchased the Honda from Magallanez’s mother after the defendant was arrested.
The young woman said that the first time she saw the Honda was in 2004, when it had original stock parts. Since then, a driver’s seat from a 1991 Acura Integra was used to replace the driver’s seat.
“The bolts don’t match up when the track doesn’t match up, so the seat won’t move forward,” the witness said before the jury went to the parking lot. “It can lean back, but the seat doesn’t actually scoot forward or backward.”
During cross-examination by Lyon County Attorney Marc Goodman, the witness said that she had known Magallanez since 2002 and was with him when he looked at the car, which he purchased a few days later.
Goodman asked the witness, who lives out of town, why she was in Emporia at that time and where she stayed.
She answered that she had stayed at the house of a friend; however, she could not remember the friend’s name.
The defense called Emporia Police detective Lisa Sage as a witness to go over details of information she had testified to as a prosecution witness.
Sage said in response to Spainhour’s questions that she had collected an animal-print blanket on Dec. 15, 2006, under a search warrant at the Magallanez home.
The blanket was removed earlier from the back seat of the Honda when it was discovered to have spots of blood on it after Magallanez and Girl No. 3 had sexual intercourse in the car.
A young man, testifying for the prosecution, said earlier that the defendant had told him to bring in the blanket. Later, the defendant had washed the blanket, the young man said.
Sage submitted the blanket to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation laboratory to be tested for blood or other biological fluids. Nothing was found on the blanket, she said.
The defense played a recording of an interview Sage conducted with the girl on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006.
The girl told the detective about the first time she and Magallanez allegedly had sexual intercourse in Soden’s Grove near the zoo exhibits.
She said that the defendant had asked her about losing her virginity, and she told him she wanted to lose her virginity to someone she cared about. She said that Magallanez asked her if she cared about him.
“He asked me if I cared about him and, being me, I said, ‘Yes.’ And then we got in the back seat,” she said in the interview. “... We kind of like just started kissing and stuff and we ended up having sex.”
The girl said that she had noticed some bleeding in her underwear after the episode, but she did not think the defendant had blood on him.
Near the end of the interview, the girl said her school counselor had told her they couldn’t talk in detail about what was happening between the girl and Magallanez because the case might end up in court.
“She said if I wanted to come into her office and cry, I could,” the girl said.