Former state trooper, accuser take stand in sex crime trial in Boone County
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The woman a former state trooper is accused of sexually assaulting took the stand to confront her alleged attacker Thursday in court.
The woman's testimony was part of the second day of what is expected to be a three-day jury trial at the Boone County Courthouse. The jury was sent home a little before 5 p.m. and will reconvene on 9 a.m. Friday.
Former Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper Jeffery Durbin is accused of sexually assaulting a woman during a law enforcement training session in the Hampton Inn & Suites Columbia two years ago. He was charged with first-degree sexual abuse and third-degree kidnapping, a felony and a misdemeanor, respectively.
Durbin also took the stand on Thursday afternoon. If found guilty by the 12-person jury, he could spend up to 10 years in prison.
Assistant Prosecutor Risa Perkins called the woman to the witness stand at 8:32 a.m. Thursday. The defense cross-examined the alleged victim for about two hours Thursday.
In Wednesday's opening statements, Perkins said the victim should have been safe the night she decided to visit Durbin's hotel room to study training material.
The woman told the jury that she attended a three-day law enforcement conference on DWI training in Columbia. After the second day of classes, March 23, 2023, she said Durbin introduced himself, asked whether she liked the classes and if she was interested in having dinner with him and some other attendees at the hotel restaurant, Stadium Grill.
She told the jury that she is an introverted person but friendly when approached, so she accepted the offer. The alleged victim said dinner was casual and friendly and she had two beers.
She said that before leaving the restaurant, Durbin invited everyone at the table to come back to his hotel room to continue talking and study.
The woman said she decided to join him because she assumed others would come. She and Durbin then went to a nearby gas station where they bought beer. She said she changed out of her day clothes into something more comfortable and headed from her room at the right end of the hallway to Durbin's room in the middle.
She said she and Durbin chatted about the seminar for a while and eventually another trooper showed up and joined the conversation. The three discussed work, classes and how to write DWI reports. At one point, Durbin showed them a report he had written as an example.
The victim claimed said the three began talking a bit about their personal lives, including their romantic lives. She said Durbin told her she looked good in one of her profile photos. He later shared with her and the other trooper that he was married, the woman testified.
That second trooper, Benjamin Gregory, took the witness stand on Thursday and corroborated that part of the woman's testimony.
Durbin began to get uncomfortably close after the other trooper left, the woman testified, including while the two were practicing field sobriety testing.
Durbin told the jury the intoxication test test turned into longer, deeper gazing into each other's eyes.
He said that when he first began to make advances toward her that night, he was trying to "read the room."
The woman said both parties were switching playing the role of officer v. intoxicated person. But when it was Durbin's turn to play the officer, he kept getting closer, she testified.
"My eyes were crossing kind of close," the woman said on the stand.
She said she began to push Durbin's shoulders away and started to walk away.
"As I was walking by him he smacked my butt," the woman said.
She told the jury she was shocked because there was no flirting to invite that behavior leading up to that moment.
"I probably should have just left at that point," she said.
The woman said Durbin tried to block her from leaving and pinned her in a corner as he sexually assaulted her.
She said she tried to reason with Durbin multiple times to let her go.
"I just thought I could talk my way out of it," the woman said.
She got part of her body out of the door but Durbin pulled her back in and continued his assault, she said.
When Durbin later took the stand, he was questioned about the moment the woman described that she was unwillingly brought back into his hotel room.
"I reached out and grabbed her wrist and guided her back in the room," Durbin said.
The defense attorney asked if Durbin ever "jerked" her back in the room or if the woman resisted and Durbin said "no" to both questions. Durbin alleged that the victim kissed him back and that their actions were consensual.
Questioning about what occurred in the hotel room
Perkins asked the woman what occurred in the hotel room once she was back at the room. The woman became emotional and said she could not remember exactly what he said, but claimed Durbin told her that because he gave her beers so she owed him something in return.
"Everything was happening fast but it felt like it was lasting forever," she said.
When she went back to work later that week, she said her sergeant asked her what was wrong, because he could tell she had been crying. That's when she told him what allegedly occurred that day. She eventually filed a report with the Columbia Police Department.
Defense Attorney Scott Rosenblum drew from past reports, transcripts of interviews with detectives and what was said by the woman during a deposition to argue that her recollection of events from that night did not line up. He also said that though she has had self-defense training as an officer she never tried to use it.
"You didn't have a gun to your head did you?" Rosenblum said.
Rosenblum said the woman's goal was to become her department's DWI officer. He said he didn't think the department would approve of her getting intoxicated while on a paid trip to sharpen her DWI skills.
He also questioned her comment to the prosecution about being introverted. He brought up that the alleged victim has posted some "not so shy" videos posted to her social media.
Rosenblum also questioned her about the amount of alcohol she told the jury she consumed. He referred to a transcript between her and a detective where she had said she had much more than two beers that night.
"I can drink Busch Light with the best of them," Rosenblum said the alleged victim said in the transcript. He claimed she minimized the amount she had to drink while testifying Thursday.
Time was another component Rosenblum pressed on. She said she went back to her hotel room for 45 minutes to one hour after purchasing more beer. Rosenblum said video footage from the hotel hallway will show she was only in her own room for about 10 minutes before heading to Durbin's hotel room.
Drawing on prior investigation interview transcripts with the woman, Rosenblum claimed she drank a 16-ounce can of beer in her room and then went "beer for beer" with Durbin in his room. He argued that her perception of events that night was not reliable due to the amount of alcohol she drank.
At one point during questioning, Rosenblum told the alleged victim "a man's life is on the line."
Rosenblum said video evidence will show she spent about five hours in Durbin's hotel room - from around 7:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.
When Durbin took the witness stand, Perkins questioned him about what happened after the alleged victim left his hotel room.
Video evidence presented to the jury shows Durbin walking outside of his hotel room after the woman left. Durbin said she left on her own terms. But the alleged victim claims she had been continually trying to get away from the defendant as he was making unwanted sexual advances toward her.Â
The woman said that when he eventually let her leave, she accidentally ran the wrong way down the hallway back to her room because she was so "flustered."
Shortly after that, Durbin is seen on video looking down the hallway.
Perkins questioned him on why he had his shirt off in the video, if he claims he was fully clothed while the woman was inside.
"I was getting ready for bed," Durbin said.
"But then you went out in the hallway," Perkins said.
"I heard running," Durbin said.
"You went kind of like this, right," Perkins said as she waved her hands in the air.
Durbin replied that that was correct.
Detective Jonathan Sauceda, who worked the case, took the witness stand Thursday.
Sauceda said Durbin visited the hotel room of the alleged victim a total of eight times after she left his hotel room.
Surveillance video from the hotel hallway confirmed this to the jury. When Durbin took the stand, he said that was simply because of his guilty conscience.
He said he did not sexually assault the woman and that he prided himself on being a state trooper, but acknowledged that violated his marital vows. He said something he did not want information about the affair to get back to his wife.
Court documents in previous reporting claimed that Durbin had told the victim at one point that he was married. But, the probable cause statement claimed after he made sexual advances, he allegedly told the victim that he was not "happily married."