Newport Beach surgeon, girlfriend accused of raping 7 women say Orange County DA’s Office misled about videos

Attorneys for a Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend charged with drugging and raping seven women are accusing prosecutors of making false and reckless public misstatements regarding videos the Orange County District Attorney’s Office initially alleged may depict the pair having sex with intoxicated women.

After reviewing the videos, defense attorneys representing Grant William Robicheaux and Cerissa Laura Riley say they do not depict any rapes, despite “set(ting) off a frenzy that completely destroyed the integrity of this case and the defendants’ ability to obtain a fair trial,” according to a motion filed this week in Orange County Superior Court.

Officials with the DA’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations raised in the defense motion.

But in a statement released in early November, the DA’s office indicated they “never said all the images are incriminating, sexual in nature, or show incapacitation or intoxication.” That DA statement added that “this case is not about the video evidence, it is about the seven women who bravely came forward to report their assaults.”

In September, then-District Attorney Tony Rackauckas held a pair of press conferences in which he alleged that Robicheaux, 38, and Riley, 31, had sexually assaulted two women, describing the pair as having met the alleged victims in Newport Beach restaurants or bars and bringing them back to Robicheaux’s apartment. Prosecutors would later add criminal charges related to an additional five alleged sexual assault victims.

During the press conferences, Rackauckas referenced hundreds, possible more than a thousand, videos collected by investigators which he claimed depicted the pair having sex with women who “appear to be intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness or near unconsciousness.”

Weeks later, prosecutors acknowledged during a court hearing that up to that point they had only viewed a fraction of the videos collected from Robicheaux and Riley. Investigators had stopped their search of the electronics after realizing that some of files belonging to Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon, could be covered by doctor-patient confidentiality.

In the newly filed defense motion, attorneys for the pair say the references to “videotaped rape,” “unconscious women” and numerous victims “represented dog whistles to a headline thirsty media and public.”

“Based almost entirely upon these statements, this case ignited the salacious and prurient interests of a worldwide audience,” the defense attorneys wrote. “Such interest resulted in a virtually unprecedented amount of national and international attention, which very quickly led the world to label, vilify, and convict Robicheaux and Riley as record-setting rapists, before one piece of testimony had ever been heard.”

The defense attorneys are asking a judge to order prosecutors to turn over all communication between the DA’s office, its forensic video lab and any law enforcement agency regarding the review of the videos at the time of the September press conferences.

The defense attorneys allege that the attention drawn to the case have “tainted” the jury pool and led to witnesses refusing to cooperate “for fear of being sucked into this maelstrom.”

The motion alludes to a variety of potential actions the defense attorneys may ultimately seek, including the dismissal of the case or the recusal of prosecutors.

Todd Spitzer, who took over as Orange County’s district attorney this month after unseating Rackauckas, was highly critical of his predecessor’s handling of the Robicheaux and Riley case during his election campaign. In September, Spitzer questioned why prosecutors hadn’t immediately filed charges after a search warrant was carried out at Robicheaux’s home in January, and accused Rackauckas of using the case to gain publicity for his own election campaign.

Attorneys for Riley and Robicheaux now say the pair got caught “in the cross-hairs of this political war” between Spitzer and Rackauckas.

A brief hearing in the case, which was not attended by either defendant, was held Friday afternoon. The motion raising concerns about the videos was not discussed, but is expected to be brought up at a Feb. 7 hearing.