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, and multiple charges of rape of girls between 14 and 16 years of age, aggravated sodomy, indecent liberties with a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, furnishing alcohol to a minor for illicit purposes, and one count of aggravated intimidation of a witness.
The trial resumed at 9 a.m. today.
The car had been towed to the enclosed parking lot by Magallanez’s defense team. It was seized in December 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 was testifying on behalf of the defendant.
She 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 she had known Magallanez since 2002 and was with him when he looked at the car, which he purchased a few days later.
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 Sage had collected a blanket on Dec. 15 under a search warrant at the Magallanez home.
A prosecution witness said earlier that blanket was removed from the back seat of the Honda because it had spots of blood on it after Magallanez and Girl No. 3 had sexual intercourse in the car.
The young man said Magallanez told him to bring in the blanket and later washed the blanket.
Sage submitted the blanket to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation laboratory to be tested for blood or other biological fluids. Nothing was found, she said.
The defense played a recording of an interview Sage conducted with the girl on Thursday, Dec. 28.
On the recording, the girl told the detective about the first time she and Magallanez allegedly had sexual intercourse in Soden’s Grove near the zoo exhibits. During testimony earlier in the trial, the girl said she had lied about the date of the incident because she feared what her parents would think if they knew she had continued a relationship with Magallanez after they had forbidden it.
On the recording, the girl said Magallanez 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.
Some charges dismissed
During the morning session, six charges against the defendant were dropped after the prosecution rested shortly after 9 a.m. Defense attorneys then asked Judge Lee Fowler to dismiss charges.
Fowler dismissed two counts of rape, three counts of furnishing alcohol for illicit purposes and one count of aggravated sodomy. Throughout the trial, Fowler has kept a log of whether criteria had been met on each of the charges.
The judge said that though the allegations of multiple sexual encounters had been made by witnesses, testimony of several sexual episodes could not be connected to a few specific charges, which did not contain enough detail to distinguish one from another.
“It’s got to be more specific when you’re charging someone with this many charges,” Fowler said.
Witnesses for Magallanez
Two former employers used employment records to testify for the defense about Magallanez’s employment at a pizza restaurant and a manufacturing plant, where he worked approximately two weeks’ each.
Each of the three young women testified that they knew the defendant during some of the times in question at the trial. Each said they had “hung out” with him and his friends and that Magallanez had never given them alcohol or drugs.
Witness No. 1, now 17, said she had been friends Magallanez’s nephew. The witness had known Girl No. 1 since first grade. They had mutual friends, but were not friends themselves.
“I didn’t like her,” Witness No. 1 said. “... She’s always bothered him and his nephew a lot.”
She said she had not seen Magallanez with a video camera.
“I drank alcohol before, but not at his house,” she said.
Witness No. 2, now 18, lived in an adjoining county when she met Magallanez at a car show when she was 15. They became friends and she “spent lots of time with him” after she got a car around her 16th birthday anniversary.
The witness testified that Girl No. 1 had pestered the defendant after the incident at the adult store, and that she could hear the alleged victim’s voice when Magallanez talked to her on his cell phone.
“She still called continually, over and over and over again,” the witness said. “She threatened to press legal charges against him if he didn’t stop hanging out with other girls.”
Girl No. 1 was dating someone else, the witness testified, and said that the girl’s boyfriend “came up and was threatening Manuel and (his nephew) and said they were going to ‘beat the crap out of him’ if he didn’t quit talking to (Girl No. 1).”
Witness 2 testified she had no knowledge of what the defendant did when he was with Girl No. 1.
“I just know she called a lot and was really jealous of whenever he would talk to any other girls besides her,” the witness said.
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