Day two in former cop’s trail focuses on alleged victim’s testimony and the investigation
The attorney for a former Connellsville police officer charged with having sex with a teen in exchange for dropping charges focused on the alleged victim’s credibility during questioning Tuesday.
Attorney Emily Smarto asked the now-18-year-old about statements she gave to police about the alleged contact with Ryan Reese, comparing it to what she told a grand jury or testified at a prior court hearing.
Reese, 44, is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and corruption of minors. The former police sergeant and Fayette County drug task force detective is charged with having sexual contact with the teen after she turned 16. Prosecutors have alleged he met the teen in 2013, when she was 15, during a drug raid at her boyfriend’s house. Instead of charging her, prosecutors alleged, he led her to believe she would not be charged if she became physically involved with him.
Smarto presented the woman a transcript of her testimony to a grand jury, where she said that when Reese asked her for oral sex while in his car, she refused. On Monday, however, the woman told a panel of jurors that she did not refuse the request.
The Herald-Standard does not identify alleged victims of sexual crimes.
Smarto also pointed out other changes in testimony between what the alleged victim told jurors and what she testified at prior hearings.
“It was so long ago that I don’t know,” the woman testified in explanation of the changes.
Smarto asked the teen if she wanted to have sex with Reese at the time.
“Yes, but that was then,” she testified. “I was on heroin really bad.”
State Deputy Attorney General Patrick J. Schulte said the preliminary hearing was more than one year ago, her grand jury testimony was a year prior to that. She met with police three months prior to going before the grand jury, Shulte said.
Smarto also showed the woman text messages between her and Reese. The woman provided them to police in 2014, when she reported the encounters.
The messages included the teen telling Reese things like, “You always make me feel better,” “I miss you,” and “We can always do something soon.”
Reese’s texts included ones that reminded the teen of her age, telling her that he could get in trouble and asking for the whereabouts of the teen’s boyfriend.
Under questioning from Schulte, the woman testified that she never initiated the sexual encounters with Reese.
James Aughinbaugh, the supervisor with the Pennsylvania State Police Special Investigations Division, testified that between October 2013 and July 2014 around 553 text messages and phone calls were made between Reese and the woman, who contacted Reese 370 times. Reese contact her 183 times, Aughinbaugh testified.
The woman testified she ended communications with the police in April 2014, as they were recording her conversations with Reese. She testified her “life started to spiral out of control” with heroin use; she said it was that time when she had sexual intercourse with Reese for the first time in a parking lot along Route 711 in May.
Aughinbaugh testified that the teen’s mother contacted police on that day to inform them she was going to meet with Reese.
Aughinbaugh said he and six other troopers remained in constant contact with each other in their vehicles when they saw Reese leave the Connellsville police station to pick the teen up and drive up Route 711, where Reese’s vehicle backed into a spot next to a bus and remained for over 20 minutes.
When questioned why troopers didn’t move in on Reese’s vehicle in case a crime was being committed against the woman, Aughinbaugh testified he and the other troopers didn’t know if it was a controlled drug purchase or a sexual encounter.
If it were a controlled drug purchase, Aughinbaugh testified things could’ve gone poorly if seven undercover officers converged on the vehicle.
“It was a risk I was not willing to take,” Aughinbaugh said.
After that encounter, Aughinbaugh testified, the teen used a paper napkin to clean herself up and left in the parking lot, and Reese used a white T-shirt to clean himself. Police later saw Reese throw the shirt into a garbage can, and retrieved it.
Aughinbaugh said those samples were sent to the state police lab.
The report from a forensic scientist, states indicated the DNA on the shirt was from Reese and the alleged victim.
“This combination of DNA types is 260 decillion, which is 260 with 33 trailing zeros, more likely in the Caucasian population to have originated from the victim and the defendant that two other unknown individuals in the population,” Schulte read.
Aughinbaugh also addressed why they didn’t put a body wire on the teen, testifying it could result in a safety concern if the wire was discovered.
A defense expert, Barry Fox, testified police could have used a wire on the woman’s clothing or in her purse.
a private investigator and former Pittsburgh police officer with body wire experience.
Schulte asked Fox, a private investigator and former Pittsburgh police officer, if having a body wire physically attached to a confidential informant’s body in a sexual assault case can blow someone’s cover.
“Absolutely,” Fox said.
Reese resigned from the Connellsville police department in 2014.
He is free on $10,000 bond.
His trial will resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday.