Rubicel Aguilar Perez is outraged by the conduct of veteran Orange County sex crimes prosecutor Karen Schatzle.
During his 2010 trial, Perez took the witness stand and claimed that he didn't attempt to rape his sister-in-law in 2007 because another person took care of him sexually.
“I have my wife,” said Perez.
The prosecutor fired back: “And your daughter.”
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Defense counsel objected and Superior Court Judge James Edward Rogan ruled the statement legally out of line because it was “argumentative.”
Now, Perez wants his conviction overturned based on Schatzle's alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
Accusing a father of having sex with his daughter normally would fit into the outrageous category.
But
not in the case of Perez, who shared a one bedroom Santa Ana rental
house with his wife, three children and eight other people.
In
2008, Perez's 11-year-old daughter got pregnant, which prompted
everyone–including a weepy Perez–to wonder aloud how on earth this could
happen.
Perez even speculated that sperm resting on a toilet seat
must have somehow entered his daughter's vagina because he was positive
the girl had not had sex with anyone.
But DNA testings proved
that Perez was 200,000 times more likely the father of his daughter's
baby than any other male on the planet.
In her closing argument,
Schatzle suggested that only “a disgusting” father would have sex with
his own daughter, which was another statement Perez found highly
objectionable.
But this month a California Court of Appeal
based in Santa Ana sided with the prosecutor, rejected the appeal and
left intact the punishment: a term of 21 years to life in prison.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.