Two Lewd Molestation Charges Reduced to Misdemeanor

NATE P.
Nate came to me and he had a problem, a massive problem. He had just been arrested for two counts of lewd molestation. The allegation was while he was out at the Tulsa State Fair that as he's walking along at almost midnight, he reached out and grabbed the vagina, of two girls walking one behind the other as they passed by him.

So, he comes to us looking at three to 20, three years in prison up to 20 years in prison, on each one of those counts. Nate will tell you that, at the moment that he was being arrested, he wasn't told what he was arrested for and he thought he was being arrested for public intoxication. Nate thought that maybe he had too much to drink while he was there at the fair. Nate and his fiancée are actually waiting for Uber to come and pick them up when the deputies approached him, and they asked him no questions other than what his name was for his booking information. They didn't ask him anything about what his conduct was or if he had been in contact with anybody, if he had touched anybody, not a single question about the case.
They did a show-up of him to the two girls. Of course, both said, yep, that's him right there. As they told the story, they're walking along, and they see my client walking with his fiancée arm in arm, hand in hand, and that they're walking anywhere from six inches to a foot apart from one another, so obviously in very close proximity. As my client is continuing to walk towards them and they're continuing to walk towards him, so twice the normal speed as a person would walk by, that he reached out, grabbed the vagina of the first girl, then pulled his hand out and then slid his hand between the two girls and grabbed the vagina of the second girl and then pulled his hand out and continued to walk and that these two girls continue to walk until they got to the end of the tent where one turned the other and said, "Hey, did something strange happen?" And from there it starts.
Well, obviously, when I hear this story, see the booking photo, read about it in the paper and then see what my client has to say, a lot of alarms go off and not because I'm worried about the client, but because this story doesn't smell right. Man, are there a lot of problems with it and as typical in these we employ our 10-step proprietary defense system and what do we uncover? Oh my gosh, these girls have some problems with their story. So we order up the police reports and we go through them with a fine-tooth comb. We go and we get photos, aerial photos of the Tulsa State Fair, pictures from the state fair, diagrams, and we play and roleplay this entire thing out only to conclude that it is logistically and physically impossible for the acts to have occurred any way that either of these two girls have said under any one of their scenarios. So, I'm utterly convinced that my client is 100% innocent and that he would not have done what these two girls were saying that he would have done while he's also holding his girlfriend's hand.
So, as we prepare for the preliminary hearing, I'm in conversations with the assistant district attorney. She's interviewed these two girls briefly and for whatever reason she thinks that they're solid witnesses. We put the on the preliminary hearing. By the time we get done with the preliminary hearing, these girls both look like pathological liars. One can't keep the story straight from the other. Both of their stories are conflicting with each other, but, in the typical Tulsa County way, what does the judge do? He goes ahead and binds the thing over anyway. Good enough for me. Let me just rubber stamp this. Typical special judge here in Tulsa County, and so then we go up to the next judge.

We order the transcript from the preliminary hearing and I file a motion to quash and the point and purpose of this isn't to win because I know we're not going to win. The point and purpose of this is to convince the judge that there is no way, that it is an absolute impossibility that the prosecutor will secure a conviction at trial. Guess what? Boy, did that work and we pounded the heck out of the inconsistent statements and the prosecutor's position on this to the point the judge ordered both me and the prosecutor into his chambers for him to berate the prosecutor and her decision to move forward with this to trial. We set the case for trial, we continue to work and prepare the case for trial and in just the weeks prior to trial, the state finally capitulated and at the end of the day, instead of my client looking at two felony aggravated sex offenses that carry up to a combined 40 years in prison between the two, the case was reduced down to a misdemeanor assault and battery with total fines and court costs of only $400.
Now, that's a happy client.

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