ST. LOUIS — A jury on Thursday acquitted a former St. Louis police officer of raping his colleague while she was unconscious after a night out at a strip club over a decade ago.
After roughly an hour of deliberation, jurors ruled in favor of Torey Phelps, 39, whose attorney argued the woman made up the rape allegations because she was facing a vicious rumor mill at the police department and hoped she could cash in on a potential lawsuit.
"At the end of the day, this is what honesty looks like," Phelps said after the verdict, gesturing to the defense's side of the courtroom, "and this is what deception looks like," he said, gesturing toward the prosecution.
The woman's case relied almost entirely on her testimony and people to whom she confided after the incident.
She testified that she blacked out one night in either 2009 or 2010 after having just one or two drinks with Phelps and another colleague, Lafeal Lawshea, 39, at the Bottoms Up strip club in Brooklyn, Illinois.
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She said she came-to briefly when she was in a car on the way back to Lawshea's house. Then she woke up with Phelps on top of her in a guest room, she said. Lawshea was also there, she said.
"Why are you going to let him do this to me?" the woman said she asked Lawshea.
The next morning, she said she woke up naked in bed with Lawshea. She was angry and embarrassed, she said, so she didn't go to the hospital or report the incident.
But Phelps' attorney, Scott Rosenblum, questioned the woman's narrative and motive, pointing out several discrepancies between her court testimony, previous depositions and an interview with detectives.
He also noted his client, Phelps, had been consistent in his own statements. He said he'd gone to the club that night and the woman hit on him. They went back to the house, and she came in the bedroom where he was sleeping and performed sex acts.
Rosenblum said the woman became embarrassed after rumors started swirling at the police department, so she made up a new narrative.
She reported the crime to an investigator in 2020 and started receiving counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder. She said she faced animosity and was called a "snitch" by her fellow officers for reporting the incident.
In 2021, Phelps was charged alongside Lawshea, who is facing his own accusations of raping two women, sexually assaulting a civilian police officer in 2019 and contacting one of the victims after an investigation began.
Prosecutor Jeremy Crowley argued jurors should believe the woman, who was telling the story of the most traumatic moment of her life.
Rosenblum pointed to a lack of physical evidence and discrepancies in the woman's statements in making their decision.
"I think we exposed the case for what it was, which was a bunch of lies," Rosenblum said as he left the courtroom on Thursday.
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Jury acquits former St. Louis police officer of raping a colleague - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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