Convictions difficult, plea deals plentiful in sexual assault cases – NBC 6 South Florida

Nancy Crowden was living her best life in Alaska last March when a call from Miami-Dade police took her back to a time she would rather forget.

“I thought it was a joke,” she told NBC6 Investigates. “I really had no memory of it.”

It was a night in January 1985 when she said two men she had just met at a Miami Beach bar raped her in an open field along Northwest 9th Street west of Red Road.

“My mind had completely forgotten,” she said. “I mean, it’s almost 40 years.”

Within two hours of the attack, doctors collected DNA from her body, which was eventually entered into a database that compares crime evidence with known criminals.

In March 2023, a direct hit: 63-year-old Gustavo Rivero, whose DNA was collected months earlier after his conviction for cocaine possession.

In a Miami-Dade police interrogation room, 4,000 miles from Crowden, Alaska, Rivero interviewed two detectives last May. “What’s wrong, man?”

He was just about to find out.

“Do you know how we know you raped her?” a detective asked after telling Rivero why he was arrested. “Because your DNA was in her.”

Rivero looked confused.

“You can’t change your DNA,” the detective continued. “So we know it’s you and that this happened in 1985.”

Rivero showed a photo of Crowden from the 1980s and said he didn’t recognize her.

At some point she would no longer recognize herself from the life she was leading at the time.

“I’ve been through a lot since then,” she said. “I am a recovering alcoholic and addict. In 1991 I got clean and sober and kind of left the whole life behind me. I have a wonderful life here in Alaska.”

But here she was drawn back to 1980s Miami-Dade and the bar in Miami Beach, where she met men like Rivero, who would become a prolific if small-time criminal with more than two dozen arrests and convictions – from drug possession to assault and burglary.

On a Wednesday evening in January 1985, he and Crowden, then 28, were living blocks from the former Dave’s Bar, on the corner of Alton Road and 9th Street. Both she and Rivero told police they remembered hanging out at the bar near where they lived, but that’s about all they agreed on.

When Crowden was first approached by police last year he could not remember anything about the crime.

But now, “I can basically see everything, yes,” she paused, emotion evident in her voice, “It was hard.” I, I – yes…”

Her version of the facts is laid out in police reports from the time, how she met two men at Dave’s and agreed to go with them, first getting a jacket from her – “it was a cold night” – and then heading west went state highway 836.

“I thought we were going to party and do cocaine,” she remembers.

She soon realized they had something else in mind.

“I remember sitting in the car. I can remember fights. I can remember everything now,” she said, including how a man pulled out a knife as they drove onto the property that was being built across the canal, across from the former Pan American Hospital.

Crowden told police she was beaten, passed out and raped by both of them.

“They took me there to kill me. I know that,” she said.

Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office

After the DNA test, Rivero would be charged with sexual assault with violence, and Crowden said a former prosecutor assured her he would face trial on that charge.

“She told me they had a great case and he was facing life in prison because a knife was used,” she remembers.

Crowden shares this publicly because of what happened next, saying, “I’m not ashamed of what happened. I’m ashamed of the result.”

Rivero was offered a plea deal that was outlined in court as follows: admit aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the knife, remain free on 12 years of probation and avoid prison time.

Academic studies and data analysis from NBC investigative units across the country show that this is common in sex crimes: The defendant would not be convicted of the most serious charge he first faced.

The numbers vary, but studies have found that fewer than 20% of reported sexual assaults result in arrests – and many are not reported at all.

Approximately two-thirds of reported cases result in prosecution, and more than 75% of completed criminal cases result in a plea agreement to a lesser charge.

According to a study by University of Massachusetts researchers of nearly 3,000 sexual violence cases in six jurisdictions between 2006 and 2012, only about 15% of completed criminal cases result in a conviction as charged.

It’s a negotiated justice that can frustrate victims like Crowden.

It’s one of the most heinous crimes, but prosecutors say sexual assault can also be among the most difficult convictions for them to secure.

To make it easier to prosecute such crimes, Natalie Snyder, chief of the Miami-Dade District Attorney’s Office’s Sex Crimes Unit, said it is important to report a sex crime as soon as possible after it occurs. Evidence can be recovered from both the crime scene and the victim, while the prosecution can provide them with professional help.

For anyone who knows a victim, Snyder said the most important thing they can do is offer whatever support they can throughout the process.

Rivero declined to answer questions from NBC6.

When he initially rejected the plea, his lawyer Sabino Jauregui said in an interview: “He is innocent. He didn’t rape this woman. He wants to go to court. And he wants to show that he didn’t do anything.”

Regarding the DNA, Jauregui explained, “If sex took place, it was consensual.”

Snyder said such a defense makes a trial riskier and that a DNA match is not always the panacea for a conviction.

“That’s not always the case,” she said. “You have to look at the circumstances and the whole thing. At this point, the defense will typically challenge whether the victim consented to the sexual activity. So it depends a lot on the memory of the victim.”

Crowden did not remember being raped when he was first contacted by police almost 40 years later, which is not uncommon in cases of this nature.

After further consideration, Rivero decided he didn’t want to go to trial after all, and entered his guilty plea last month in her case to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, not the most serious charge: sexual battery.

Crowden was given the Zoom information to attend the plea and given the right to speak, but she declined. “I felt like it made me look stupid,” she said.

In accepting Rivero’s plea, Judge Ariel Rodriguez noted some of the difficulties the state has faced.

Crowden “couldn’t remember exactly what happened … her memory was really vague,” the judge said, adding: “I realize that the state will have a very difficult time proving this case if it goes to trial.” Negotiation would have come.” ”

Crowden recounted what the judge said: “I understand that. It was only the final hearing when this happened, it was scheduled for trial and I was ready to go to trial. I’m not a loser. I don’t like losing and I feel like I lost without a fight.”

But, Snyder said, a plea deal isn’t necessarily a loss.

“Plea hearings have a negative connotation,” she said, “but they add finality to a case that we might not otherwise get… It’s a safe outcome for our victims.” It brings closure to the case. It brings with it a conviction, and it brings with it other things: If the defendant is found not guilty, he walks out as if nothing had happened.”

As part of the agreement, Rivero will be placed in a sex offender program and must submit to three drug tests per month. Failure to comply could result in a probation violation and a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

More generally, Snyder said, if an offender violates probation, “we’re going to do everything we can to make sure they go to prison.”

Based on what Rivero said in his interrogation in May 2023, a failed test is entirely possible.

“If I have Coke, I take Coke. And when I don’t have cocaine, I graze,” he told investigators during interrogation, revealing that he had used cocaine within 24 hours of his arrest.

And if he fails, at least one woman in Alaska won’t shed tears.

“I hope he screws up,” Crowden said.

The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7. You can call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected to a trained sexual assault service provider near you.