State v. Steele
| Decision Date | 08 April 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 20190441-CA,20190441-CA |
| Citation | 486 P.3d 100 |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Thorpe STEELE, Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
Emily Adams, Freyja Johnson, Salt Lake City, and Cherise M. Bacalski, Attorneys for Appellant
Sean D. Reyes, Salt Lake City, and David A. Simpson, Attorneys for Appellee
1
Opinion
¶1 Thorpe Steele does not deny he had sex with his trainee, Emma.2 Instead, he claims their sexual attraction was so significant that within thirty minutes of meeting, the two engaged in passionate sexual activity, during business hours, in the sleeper compartment of a semi-truck parked in their employer's parking lot. And he claims that they pledged to continue to do so daily for the next month. But within minutes after Steele left the truck, Emma, sobbing and hysterical, reported that she had been raped. Charges and a trial followed, and Steele now appeals his convictions for rape and forcible sodomy. He generally contends that his attorneys provided ineffective assistance based on the way they handled evidence of Emma's sexual orientation. We affirm.
¶2 Emma owned a farm where she and her wife (Wife) raised sheep. Emma decided to get a commercial driver license so that she could haul hay and livestock for her farm. To that end, she signed up with a trucking company (the Company) that offered a commercial driver license program. The program included on-the-job training, which required each trainee to drive a truck on a long-haul trip under the supervision of an experienced trucker. The Company assigned Emma to drive under Steele's supervision, meaning that Emma and Steele would be driving his truck together for approximately twenty-eight days. Wife dropped Emma off at the Company's headquarters on the morning that the long-haul trip was supposed to begin. Emma was both nervous and excited about making her first long-haul trip, and she expressed her intention to call Wife every day and night while she was away.
¶3 Emma and Steele met for the first time that day. Steele was about thirty years older than Emma, nearly one foot taller, outweighed her by close to sixty pounds, and was missing half his front teeth. After introducing herself, Emma loaded her bags into Steele's truck. When Emma, who was wearing shorts, bent over to pick up one of her belongings, Steele remarked, Steele followed this by saying, "what happens in the truck stays in the truck." Steele then showed her around the truck, eventually leading her into the sleeper cab—a compartment of the truck cabin with a bunk bed and television. Steele showed Emma a knife and mentioned that two others were placed throughout the sleeper cab.
¶4 Steele sat on the bottom bunk bed while Emma tried to get her bearings in the sleeper cab. Suddenly, he grabbed her as she was trying to figure out how to operate the television, thrust one of his hands down her shorts and underwear, and pushed them down to her ankles. Emma told Steele to stop. Instead, he put his hand up her shirt and grabbed her breasts, telling Emma to undress. When Emma again told him, "[N]o," Steele responded, "[N]o is not an option," and threatened to hurt her if she did not comply. Emma felt hopeless, as though "there was nothing [she] could do" while Steele pushed her aside to close the curtains and lock the doors. Emma ended up face down on the bed, and Steele tried to pry her legs open while grabbing her ponytail and biting her shoulder. Steele was eventually able to insert his penis into Emma's vagina, demanding that she say it "felt good" and that she "wanted it." Steele eventually flipped Emma onto her back and put his penis into her mouth. When Steele finished, he told Emma to "forget about [her] family" because she was "going to be his whore for the next month," and he repeated, "what happens in the truck stays in the truck." Steele then left to take a shower.
¶5 Emma fled the truck in a panic. She yelled for help, but no one else was close enough to hear, so she used her phone to call one of her former trainers. Emma was "[t]remendously [in] tears" on the phone and, in the trainer's own words, "[I]t took everything I had to get her to calm down on the phone to find out what was going on." When the trainer discerned that she needed help, he told her to find a safe place to hide while he called for help.
¶6 Emma hid in a bathroom until an employee found her and escorted her to the human resources office. There, an employee in that department observed that Emma "came in crying" and, after the employee ushered her into another room, she sat on the floor and "cr[ied] the whole time." Concerned by her observations of Emma, the employee pointedly asked Emma if she had been raped. Emma managed to say, "[Y]es," before crumpling to the floor and crying uncontrollably. When a police officer arrived shortly thereafter, Emma was "very visually shaken up." Emma was crying the entire time the officer tried to ascertain what had happened, but eventually she told him that her "trainer driver" had raped her. Wife arrived soon after and likewise observed Emma "sitting in the fetal position on the floor, rocking[,] ... crying, really shook up."
¶7 At that point, the officer told Wife, "We really need to take [Emma] over to the hospital to have the examination done." Wife drove Emma to the hospital, where a sexual assault nurse examiner proceeded to examine her. Emma was "very tearful" and "had to stop several times to collect ... and compose herself," but she was able to tell the nurse what had happened. During the examination, the nurse specifically found fresh "linear abrasions" that "matched [Emma's] narrative" that Steele had bitten her shoulder. The nurse concluded that, based on the totality of the examination, Emma's injuries were medically consistent with her description of the rape.
¶8 When Steele spoke with police, he claimed that what happened in the truck—which took place approximately thirty minutes after the two met for the first time—was a consensual encounter. According to Steele, when he first met Emma, he told her she "was cute" and "had nice eyes." He further claimed that when they were in the sleeper cab, they stared into one another's eyes before "lean[ing] in" and kissing. Emma, Steele said, then "made some movements towards him," which initiated the sexual encounter. Steele said he told Emma, "You don't have to do this, this isn't part of the job," to which she replied, "It's not like I'm stopping you." Steele claimed that he then put his hand around her backside and started to remove her shorts, the two stripped naked and closed the curtains together, and then Emma pushed Steele onto the bed. She eventually got on top of Steele and the two had intercourse while Emma told Steele where and how to touch her. Steele's version of the sexual encounter concluded by Emma performing oral sex on him.
¶9 Steele continued to offer more details about what he alleged occurred after that, claiming Emma caressed his face while the two cuddled. And when Steele told her that he "didn't feel like maybe he had performed up to his level because it had been so long since he'd been with a woman," Emma supposedly assured him "that it was going to be okay [and] that they would work on it together for the next 28 days." According to Steele, the two were "happy" and joked around, and they eventually agreed they would not tell their wives about anything that happened in the truck. The two also agreed to shower and return to the truck to begin what Steele apparently believed was going to be twenty-eight days of non-stop consensual sex with his trainee. When the officer asked Steele why, if any of that had occurred, Emma would fabricate a rape accusation, Steele speculated that maybe she "was worried that her wife had found out." Police arrested Steele, and the State charged him with rape and forcible sodomy.
¶10 In later investigations, Steele claimed that Emma had told him she was bisexual and had not been "with a man" for several years. In response, the State filed a motion in limine (the rule 412 motion) to preclude any references to these statements at trial under rule 412 of the Utah Rules of Evidence —which provides that, absent a specific exception, "evidence offered to prove that a victim engaged in other sexual behavior ... [or] to prove a victim's sexual predisposition" is "not admissible." Utah R. Evid. 412(a).
¶11 Steele's trial attorneys (Counsel)4 filed a response in which they stipulated that Steele "ha[d] no objection to the State's motion to exclude statements that [Emma] made" that "she was bisexual" and that "she had not been ‘with a man’ for a number of years." But Counsel would not "agree to a blanket exclusion of all possible future 412 evidence" and specifically "reserve[ed] the right to file a motion to include 412 evidence in trial should any evidence arise from" results of ongoing physical evidence tests.
¶12 The court held a hearing a few weeks before the trial to discuss several outstanding motions.5 Regarding the rule 412 motion, the court stated its understanding of the stipulation was "that really [Counsel] just said they wanted to keep some options open, but other than that they were not contesting the specific" statements referenced in the motion. Counsel agreed and explained that they would "only be bringing up 412 information if it's opened by the alleged victim in the case, if she starts mentioning her sexuality or why she wouldn't engage in sexual acts with a man or things like that."
¶13 Just before jury selection, the court and the attorneys engaged in "a lengthy conversation about what the parties had stipulated to, how the parties would present their cases, and what evidence should come in." Among many other things, Couns...
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