Rape, Sex Abuse Trial – Full Acquittal

Jackson County, OR – On Thursday, June 13, 2019, a jury found 25-year-old (23-years-old when arrested) Derek Stout not guilty on all 13 counts the state had brought against him, which included rape and sex abuse related crimes. The verdict was the conclusion of an almost 3 year-long prosecution with a nail-biting 9-day trial.  Defense Attorney James Leuenberger represented Derek Stout.

Attorney James Leuenberger

This case is demonstrative of how important competent legal counsel is to a person accused of serious felony sex crimes. James Leuenberger began representing Derek approximately four months after Derek was first charged with raping a 15-year-old young woman. Derek was later charged with attempted rape involving a separate adult woman.

James Leuenberger first disconnected the rape and attempted rape cases by rightfully pointing-out to deputy district attorney Terry Smith-Norton that the attempted rape case had been filed after the statute of limitations. That charge was dismissed, leaving only the rape claim. According to the US~Observer’s Head of Investigations Edward Snook, “Leuenberger is one of the few attorneys in Oregon capable of winning a sex abuse case when the US~Observer is not involved.”

The Rape and Sex Abuse Allegations

In early September 2016, two young women visited Derek Stout’s home with the stated goals of drinking alcohol, swimming and getting to know Derek.

According to Derek and several other witnesses, the girls both stated they were over 18 years old. They also had tattoos that supported that presumption. Derek had previously met the 15-year-old at a friend’s party where she consumed alcohol and the thought of “carding” her never crossed his mind. Derek simply took them at their word – a mistake he will never make again.

The young women didn’t bother to tell Derek the truth; that one was 15 years-old and the other was 16 years-of-age. The 15-year-old also didn’t tell him that she had the flu and had been vomiting for several days.

The three young people met at Derek’s parents’ home. They went swimming and hung out by the pool. Fortunately for Derek, the 16-year-old took two photos that day at the pool. One showed Derek and the 15-year-old in the pool. The second was a selfie of the two girls; a selfie that showed a distinctive curved mark on the 15-year old’s chest.

Things did not play out as Derek had hoped. When Derek found the 15-year-old to be too “aggressive,” he pulled back. She reacted badly by the pool, calling him a, “player” and jumped into the pool after the evening air had cooled.

After she dried off, Derek and the 15-year-old went to his bedroom. This time she said something that again, put Derek off. Her exact words were not allowed to be told to his jury. Derek responded by pulling back again, and he left his bedroom.

The 15-year-old then called 911 and accused Derek of rape. After leaving the home, she broke into the neighbor’s house. According to witnesses, she attempted to steal the neighbor’s car. She passed out in the neighbor’s bed and was eventually found by the neighbors upon their return.

When the neighbors woke her up, the 15-year-old repeated her rape allegation. 911 was called again and Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy Hohl responded. His video recorded interview of the 15-year-old was both the state’s and Derek’s trial exhibit.

The Changing Story

The state emphasized the 15-year old’s apparent fright and intoxication. Derek’s attorney, James Leuenberger, emphasized her telling Deputy Hohl that she had kept Derek from touching her sexually.

The 15-year-old was taken to Rogue Regional Medical Center (RRMC) where she told a markedly different story than she told Deputy Hohl. At RRMC she told the Sex Assault Nurse Examiner that Derek had ejaculated in her vagina and mouth. She told Jackson County Sheriff’s Detective Bohn that Derek had raped her, that he held her down by pushing on her chest, and that he was on top of her and kept his weight on her. She told Det. Bohn that the curved mark on her chest must have been caused by Derek while he was holding her down.

Neither the detective nor the nurse took photographs of the 15-year-old’s chest like they were supposed to. The detective’s interview of the 15-year-old was only audio recorded and not video recorded which is standard procedure – another mistake.

The failure of the detective and the nurse to photograph and video record the 15-year-old would have left the jury in the dark as to what she looked like on the day in question had her friend not taken that selfie (photo). That picture clearly showed the mark on the young woman’s chest had previously existed – exposing her lie.

While the 15-year-old was climbing out of Derek’s bedroom window to leave his home, her 16-year-old friend talked to Derek’s two other friends who had arrived at his home. She told them that the 15-year-old had called 911 and she (the 16-year-old) wanted to leave immediately because she didn’t want to be arrested. Apparently, the 16-year-old had a warrant out for her arrest. When neither of Derek’s friends volunteered to drive her away, she left Derek’s home and walked to a different house. That neighbor was kind enough to call and pay for a cab.

The deputies investigating the alleged rape accusations stopped the cab and interviewed the 16-year-old. Deputy Hohl conducted the interview. When he first met the 16-year-old, she was silent and calm. Immediately after Deputy Hohl asked her if she was okay, she then started to cry and act hysterically. She raised her hands toward her eyes.

Earlier in the day she had taken a selfie showing her wearing heavy blue eye makeup on her eyelids. According to Leuenberger, her makeup covered up a mark on her left eyelid.

This second video recording was presented by both the state and Derek’s defense as a crucially important trial exhibit. The state pointed to the 16-year old’s hysteria. Derek’s attorney, James Leuenberger, pointed to the “quick as lightening” change in demeanor and the recording of her wiping her left eye lid with her left thumb, a gesture he argued was her wiping off her make-up.

When the 16-year-old arrived at RRMC she told her doctor that Derek had hit her in the face with a door or a fist and that he had caused the “bruise” on her left eyelid. The doctor had an expensive CT scan performed; a CT scan the taxpayers paid for. The radiologist reported no broken bones and no soft tissue injury.

The 16-year-old told Det. Bohn that in addition to having punched her in the face, Derek had punched her in the abdomen, knocked her down, kicked her in the abdomen while she was down, and pointed a handgun at her face.

When the deputies searched the Stout home for weapons, they found several handguns owned and possessed by Derek’s parents which had been unavailable to Derek. The state never presented any fingerprint evidence to connect Derek to the handgun they seized from Derek’s father’s bedroom, even though they presented fingerprint evidence that connected Derek to an empty liquor bottle, the 15-year-old to an empty coffee cup, and the 16-year-old to an empty shot glass.

Derek and his attorney were ready to try their case in January 2019. One of the reasons they were ready was the DNA test results did not incriminate Derek. Because attorney Leuenberger had asked the state to collect the 15-year old’s boyfriend’s DNA and compare it to the DNA found in the 15-year-old’s vagina, Derek and Leuenberger knew it was her boyfriend’s DNA that had been found. The test confirmed the DNA found was not Derek’s, it was the boyfriend’s. James Leuenberger anticipated he would be permitted to tell the jury that it was the boyfriend who should be prosecuted because he was more than 3 years older than the 15-year-old (in Oregon underage children can’t consent to having sex with persons who are more than 3 years older than they are).

The case was then delayed when a new young woman came forward a week before the scheduled January 2019 trial. This woman alleged Derek had molested her and raped her in his parents’ pool during the summer of 2015.

This accuser was a friend of Derek’s other friend, Emily. The new young woman claimed she had remained silent for over three years because she didn’t think her best friend, Emily, would believe her. She said she came forward because she felt like a hypocrite because she maintained her silence about her own rape while professionally counseling young at-risk women who had been sexually abused.

The Trial

At trial, this friend of Emily stated that Derek had put his fingers in her vagina while she was swimming away from him. When attorney James Leuenberger asked her what type of stroke she was swimming, she could not remember. When Leuenberger asked her why she had not cried out loudly in pain when Derek put his fingers inside her vagina, she said that she had quietly told Derek to, “stop.” Leuenberger again asked why she had not cried out loudly since her best friend Emily and another man were within earshot and seated a few feet from the young woman and Derek. The young woman never answered that question. She cried.

The closing argument by deputy district attorney Terry Smith-Norton included her request that the jury not allow Derek to get away with treating young women like objects.

Defense attorney Leuenberger reminded the jury that Derek was not on trial for exercising bad judgment or not treating young women with the respect they deserved.

Leuenberger repeatedly reminded the jury it had to find the state had proven each and every element of each and every count beyond a reasonable doubt before the jury could find Derek guilty. Leuenberger pointed out, in painful detail, how the state had repeatedly failed to follow its own procedures for collecting evidence. He then reminded the jury how the 15-year-old’s story had changed several times. It had changed three in total from the story she told Dep. Hohl, to the story she told Det. Bohn, and finally the story she had told the jury during trial.

The 15-year-old’s story at trial seemed tailored. She tried to conform to the story that aligned with the only spot on Derek’s bed sheet where both his DNA and her DNA was present.

The DNA testing showed, (1) the only DNA found inside the 15 year old’s vagina was her boyfriend’s DNA, (2) Derek’s DNA found in her mouth was the type of DNA found in saliva (not sperm), (3) the fact Derek’s saliva in her mouth was consistent with the consensual kissing everyone agreed had occurred pool side, and (4) the one spot his DNA and her DNA was found on his bedsheet was at the very edge of his fitted sheet and was on the side of the mattress, not the top of the mattress which did not corroborate her story – that he held her down.

At trial the 15-year-old testified that Derek committed rape by putting his penis in her vagina while he was standing up on the floor near the foot of the bed, that her hips were on the edge of the bed, and that her feet were hanging over the side of the bed. That description was markedly different from what she had told Det. Bohn. She told Det. Bohn that Derek was on top of her and holding her down.

Leuenberger argued that the evidence showed that the mark on the 16-year-old’s eye was present before she met Derek and that she wiped off the make-up covering the mark only after Dep. Hohl asked her if she was okay.

Finally, Leuenberger argued about the second allegation, over three years later. He stated that the evidence showed Derek had not even met Emily’s friend until October 2015 at the earliest and that she had not been to his parents’ pool until the summer of 2016. He argued that her description of what Derek had done to her was physically impossible, and that it made no sense for her to have responded to the painful attack she described by merely saying, “stop,” quietly enough for only Derek to have heard.

After closing arguments finished, the jury was then excused to deliberate. For seven hours the jury deliberated. For seven hours, Derek and his family stressfully waited for the jury’s decision. The ray of hope they hung onto during the seven hours was the fact they could hear the jury listening to audio recordings on the other side of the court’s doors. Derek and his family knew the jury was carefully examining the evidence.

After deliberation, the Judge read the verdict – not guilty on all thirteen counts!

Moving On After a Sex Crime Not Guilty Verdict

What we don’t know is, can Derek put the pieces of his life back together? Derek was fired from his job as a firefighter in Jackson County District Three. He lost his reputation when mainstream media blasted what the police wanted the public to see MANY times before his trial – making him out to be a guilty rapist before having his day in court. Many comments damaged his reputation online. One comment called for him to be publicly hung.

Derek is now engaged to be married in June of 2020. He believes he can finish his firefighter training and begin a firefighting career in any one of several states other than Oregon (Derek believes his interim accreditation has expired in Oregon; which means, if he was to remain here, he would have to start some of his training from scratch without credit for the work he completed before he was falsely accused).

It appears that with these charges behind him, Derek is going to make the best for himself and take nothing for granted.

Writer’s Note: The US~Observer was initially involved in Derek’s case, but later dropped the case. Again, had Derek not had James Leuenberger for an attorney, he would currently be sitting behind bars; a convicted rapist.