A disgraced Republican accused of raping a teenage trainee testified Thursday that he believes the act was by mutual consent after the first meeting, which he described as successful.
But in the midst of her own testimony the day before, former Idaho State Prosecutor Aaron von Ellinger, identified in court documents only as “Jane Doe,” was so upset that she fled the courtroom, saying, “No.” I can do that while she was going out.
When it became clear that Dow would not return, prosecutors dropped their arguments, abruptly ending a sinister trial that caught the country’s attention.
As Doe could not be cross-examined, Judge Michael Reardon ordered that her testimony be removed from the record, telling jurors to ignore everything she said. The jury will now have to discuss “as if she did not appear at all,” said criminal defense attorney David P. Shapiro, who is not involved in the case but has dealt with many others.
“It’s hard to release this bell,” Shapiro told The Daily Beast. However, he continued: “It will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to get a sentence without her testimony.
Prosecutors claim that 39-year-old von Ellinger forced Doe, 19, to have oral sex with him and broke into her fingertips at his home in Boise after the two went out to dinner in March 2021. Von Ellinger resigned. the following month before he could be expelled from the state legislature following a finding by a bipartisan ethics committee that he had engaged in “misconduct.” An arrest warrant was issued in September of that year. He was arrested later that month at Atlanta International Airport when he returned to the United States from a long vacation in Central America – which von Ellinger’s lawyer insisted was premeditated rather than an attempt to evade justice.
Doe, for her part, was a target of von Ellinger’s Republicans from the start. Last August, Republican Priscilla Giddings, a Republican from the small town of White Bird, revealed Doe’s identity on social media and in an email to voters, and right-wing blogs later published Doe’s name and photo online.
In his testimony, von Ellinger said he met with Doe and gave her his mobile phone number after inviting her to his office to view his artwork in January 2021. He said they would see each other from from time to time around the Statehouse and will talk. But he didn’t hit her, he insisted.
The two made plans for dinner in early March after Doe sent him a message to say hello, according to von Ellinger. He took her in his roommate’s car and took her to eat at Barbacoa, a Spanish steak in Boise, he testified. Neither of them drank alcohol during the three-hour meal, he said.
Doe held his hand as he returned to his seat, von Ellinger said, noting that when they arrived at his apartment building, he parked in a disabled space and took Doe upstairs.
“Things were going well and I asked … if she would like to move to the bedroom,” von Ellinger said at the booth on Thursday. She said, “Of course.” We got up, held hands, and went into the bedroom.
Doe said earlier that von Ellinger always carried a pistol and that he took it out of its holster on his way home and put it on the nightstand. In court, von Ellinger denied this, saying he “very rarely” carried his pistol, which he said was in the closet that night.
“I complimented her, told her how beautiful she is,” von Ellinger said.
Von Ellinger claims that Doe never said that she was uncomfortable with what was happening, and “willingly” gave him oral sex for about 15 seconds. He then said that she stopped, saying that “tonight is probably not a good night for sex” because she did not shave and was not in birth control. He was then stimulated manually and ejaculated on Doe’s stomach, he told the court.
“She never once gave me an indication that she did not want to be involved,” von Ellinger said.
In a criminal complaint filed last October, along with testimony this week, prosecutors set out a number of details that they say undermine von Ellinger’s allegations. Doe resisted von Ellinger’s unwanted progress, the complaint said, but her resistance was overcome by “an objectively reasonable belief that resistance would be useless or that resistance would lead to force or violence” by von Ellinger.
In his opening arguments earlier this week, prosecutor Caitlin Farley described the case as “concerning power – power held in the wrong hands”. She said von Ellinger told Dow that he had to stop by his apartment after dinner to get something, but when they got there, von Eringer allegedly took her to his bedroom and attacked her by pushing his penis into her mouth and pressed her hands down with his feet as he ejaculated on her.
“He did not stop and did not listen to him [Doe]”Farley told the jury.
On Thursday, Cox told the jury that an army veteran von Ellinger had injured his back in a helicopter crash during his service and was thus unable to pick up Doe and carry her, as she described.
Jurors also heard testimony from Doe’s mother, who said her daughter was a volunteer at the Domestic Violence Protection Center before the alleged attack, and from Ann Wardle, a nurse who is conducting a rape test and says Doe is she was in tears as she recounted what had happened. Wardle said Doe had a goose egg from her head banging against the wall of von Ellinger’s bedroom as she struggled to escape.
On Wednesday, Dow appeared for direct questioning by prosecutors. She struggled visibly, staring at the protective table and looking at the exits as she spoke. Farley begged Doe to focus on her and her testimony, to which Doe said, “I can’t.”
As he began to describe what had happened that night in von Ellinger’s apartment, Doe stopped abruptly and said, “I can’t do this,” before leaving the courtroom. She never returned.
This, Shapiro said, created a “problem of confrontation against the Sixth Amendment” that would deny von Ellinger his constitutional right to stand up to his accuser.
“So all her testimony was shocked because the defense did not have the opportunity to question her,” Shapiro told The Daily Beast.
“What they have is the testimony of the nurse who managed to get into some of the statements of the prosecutor,” Shapiro explained, noting that the testimony of Doe’s mother also remains in the record. “So the jury can hear some of what the prosecutor told her, but historically it is very difficult for the jury to convict anyone in any case, especially in a sexual assault case, if they have zero evidence to be heard by a prosecutor.”
In essence, Shapiro said, the case started with “He said, she said”, but now there is no “She said” because her testimony was stopped. The defense was not that it didn’t happen – they found his DNA all over his body.
The jury began the discussion on Thursday.
Von Ellinger, who was appointed to the Idaho House of Representatives in June 2020 to complete his term as a dead MP, has resigned after serving less than a year. If convicted of rape and forced intrusion using a foreign object, he receives a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. His lawyer, John Cox, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
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