Two New York City Police Officers Acquitted of Rape

The woman had described snippets of a harrowing night in which the officers, called to help her because she was extremely intoxicated, instead abused her. They insisted no rape occurred, with one allowing only that he snuggled with her while she wore nothing but a bra.

The verdict brings to an end a criminal case that drew outrage across the city when the officers were indicted in 2009, and provides some measure of vindication for the officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata.

The officers were convicted of three counts of official misconduct for entering the woman’s apartment, but the jury found them not guilty of all other charges, including burglary and falsifying business records. The Police Department said the officers were fired Thursday.

For Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, the verdict was an unsatisfying conclusion. The decision, after a trial that lasted almost two months, also comes at a critical juncture for an office that is navigating the biggest case of Mr. Vance’s brief tenure: the sexual-assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund managing director.

The jury’s decision also underscores the difficulty of obtaining favorable results for women who say they were sexually assaulted, and who often are subjected to scrutiny and skepticism that keep many of them from speaking out. In this case, defense lawyers pounced on the credibility of the woman because she was very drunk on the night in question and did not remember many details.

After the verdict, Officer Moreno said in front of the courthouse that his accuser was “mistaken and confused,” and that “she made the whole thing up.”

But the officer, who appeared tense and tight-faced, also said he was not angry.

“I’m glad it’s over,” he said. “It’s a lesson and a win.”

When a reporter asked Officer Moreno what he meant by lesson, his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, interjected, saying, “Well, we’ll just leave it at that.”

Both officers could face up to a year in jail on each count when they are sentenced on June 28 before Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The case presented a formidable challenge for prosecutors: there was no DNA evidence suggesting that either officer had committed a sexual act.

The jurors, who reached their verdict on their seventh day of deliberations, left the courthouse without commenting, and most reached for comment later declined to do so.

One juror, Richard Schimenti, said there was not enough evidence to prove that a rape had occurred.

“I did think that they might have had sex, but that doesn’t mean that they did have sex,” he said. “There is nothing to substantiate this. There’s no DNA, there’s no proof in any way that they had sex.”

Mr. Schimenti said he believed the prosecution’s case was hampered by the accuser’s memory loss.

“It was very hard to make a leap to charge people with rape when the principal person in the trial didn’t remember so many things,” he said.

As the verdict was read, Officer Mata looked straight ahead, while Officer Moreno cast his eyes downward, placing his fingertips on his lips.

After the verdict was delivered, Officer Moreno’s mother, Aida Moreno-Ruiz, called a relative from her cellphone. “Hey, Freddy,” she said. “It’s over. It’s over. Not guilty.”

She said in an interview that she knew that her son was “not capable of doing something so ugly.”

“Thank God it’s over and the truth came out,” she said.

Mr. Tacopina, who tried the case along with Chad Seigel and Officer Mata’s lawyer, Edward J. Mandery, called it one of his biggest victories.

“These guys were publicly presumed guilty more so than any other case I’ve been involved in,” Mr. Tacopina said in an interview. “These guys were called ‘rape cops’ before the trial even started.”

While many people thought a conviction would be a formality, Mr. Tacopina added, “I believed in this guy and we believed in these guys since Day 1.”

Nonetheless, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Thursday that the officers would be fired immediately — up until Thursday, they had been suspended with pay.

“The guilty verdicts involved violations of the officers’ oaths of office and, as a result, warrant immediate termination,” Mr. Kelly said.

More than 35 witnesses testified at the trial, which was highlighted by combative, dramatic cross-examination between Coleen Balbert, an assistant district attorney, and the officers.

Prosecutors had accused Officer Mata, 29, of standing guard while Officer Moreno had sex with the woman. She was so sick that the officers should have called an ambulance for her, prosecutors said, while the defense argued that the woman, despite being drunk, was still walking and talking.

After initially helping the woman into her apartment, the officers were captured by surveillance cameras as they re-entered the woman’s East Village building three times.

Officer Moreno, 43, testified that he was a recovering alcoholic and had developed a rapport with the woman that night, when she confided in him that her friends were angry at her because she drank too much. The two flirted, he sang Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” to her and she actually came onto him, wearing nothing but a bra, he said. He testified that he kissed the woman on the forehead and snuggled with her in her bed, but insisted they did not have sex.

But the woman, now 29 and living in California, told a much different story of what happened on that night in December 2008.

The woman, who was drinking heavily at a Brooklyn bar to celebrate a job promotion, conceded that she had blacked out many details of the evening, although she insisted she did not have a drinking problem. Still, she testified to vivid memories of hearing police radios crackling and Velcro tearing open, of feeling her tights being rolled down, and then of being penetrated as she lay dazed, face down on her bed.

When she testified last month, the woman, who has a $57 million lawsuit pending against the city and the officers, broke down several times while on the witness stand when recalling what she said happened to her.

“I couldn’t believe that two police officers who had been called there to help me had instead raped me and left me face down in a pool of vomit in my bed to die,” she said in her testimony.

Joseph Goldstein, Anemona Hartocollis and Noah Rosenberg contributed reporting.

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Serbia Says Jailed Mladic Will Face War Crimes Trial

Serbian Government, via ReutersGeneral Ratko Mladic, center, arrived at court in Belgrade on Thursday. More Photos »

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general held responsible for the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested on Thursday, signaling Serbia’s intention of finally escaping the isolation it brought on itself during the Balkan wars, the bloodiest in Europe since World War II.

The Op-Ed columnist Roger Cohen recalls meeting Ratko Mladic in Belgrade in 1992.

Ratko Mladic, center, observed the positions of Bosnian government forces in Gorazde in 1994. More Photos »

The capture of the former general removes a major obstacle to Serbia’s becoming a member of the European Union, which had insisted that Mr. Mladic be apprehended and turned over for trial in an international court before the country could get on track to join the 27-nation union.

President Boris Tadic of Serbia gave few details in announcing the arrest but promised that Mr. Mladic would be turned over for trial at The Hague within days. “I think today we finished a difficult period in our recent history,” he said. For Europeans, buffeted by financial crises, the arrest of their most wanted war crime suspect has a resonance on the magnitude of the killing of Osama bin Laden for Americans. It also amounts to a significant diplomatic victory, suggesting that the incentive of membership in the world’s biggest trading bloc remains a crucial foreign policy tool in the post-cold war world.

Mr. Mladic had been at large for 15 years, and many European diplomats argued that Serbian officials could have arrested him long ago if they felt that the benefits of opening the door wider to the West outweighed appeals to virulent nationalism among some Serbs, who still regard Mr. Mladic as a hero.

Mr. Mladic was captured in the farming town of Lazarevo north of Belgrade after the authorities received a tip that a man resembling him was residing there. Serbia’s interior minister, Ivica Dacic, said that Mr. Mladic had been found with his own expired identification card and an old military book. Some Serbian news reports said he had been living under the name of Milorad Komadic and had labored as a construction worker. But the Interior Ministry said Thursday that it did not have evidence suggesting he had taken on a false identity.

The massacre at Srebrenica was the worst ethnically motivated mass murder on the European continent since World War II. Mr. Mladic was also accused of war crimes for the three-and-a-half-year siege of Sarajevo, in which 10,000 people died, including 3,500 children.

While close associates had predicted that Mr. Mladic would sooner kill himself than face capture, Serbian news media reported that he was alone at the time of his arrest and had two pistols with him that he made no attempt to use. The police said he did not resist arrest. Witnesses said he appeared disoriented and tired, and that one of his hands appeared to be paralyzed, possibly because of a stroke.

Many of the 27 members of the European Union had been in favor of rewarding Belgrade for its recent tilt toward Europe and the United States by advancing its move toward membership in the bloc. But some, especially the Netherlands, had insisted that as long as Mr. Mladic remained free, Serbia could not join the union.

Mr. Mladic’s crimes remained an emotional issue for the Dutch, whose peacekeepers were overrun at Srebrenica, allowing Mr. Mladic’s soldiers to mow down men and boys, their hands tied behind their backs.

“His arrest gives a strong signal to the world that anyone accused of the worst crimes can be brought to justice,” said Serge Brammertz, the prosecutor for the United Nations-based war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He said international pressure to block Serbia’s entry into the European Union was a vital prod that had precipitated the arrest. According to B92, the independent Serbian broadcasting company, residents in Lazarevo said that they were unaware that Mr. Mladic was living among them, but had spotted the police early Thursday at a house reportedly belonging to Mr. Mladic’s relatives. Serbian analysts said Lazarevo had had a large population of Bosnian Serbs since World War II, some of whom would have been sympathetic to Mr. Mladic. They said he had lived in the village for two months.

“Extradition is happening,” President Tadic said, referring to The Hague. “This is the end of the search for Mladic. It’s not the end of the search for all those who helped Mladic and others to hide and whether people from the government were involved.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from New York, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris. Marlise Simons contributed reporting from Paris, and David Rohde from New York.

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