The door to Pima County Superior Court Judge Alan Goodwin's courtroom where Ricardo Garcia's sexual assault trial is taking place.
This article contains graphic descriptions and testimony of an alleged sexual assault, rape kits, and specimen collection. Note AZPM is not publishing the victim’s name out of respect for her anonymity.
The victim claiming former Pima County Sergeant Ricardo Garcia sexually assaulted her at a 2022 Christmas party testified Wednesday that Garcia’s relationship with Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos prevented her from initially coming forward.
On the second full day of witness testimony, the prosecution, led by Deputy Santa Cruz County Attorney Mathew Cannon, pivoted to a private meeting Sheriff Nanos called with the victim two days after the party.
The victim testified Garcia told people at that Christmas party that he was “best friends” with the sheriff and expected a promotion because of it.
“That night at the party, Mr. Garcia was bragging about how the following year he was going to be lieutenant thanks to Sheriff Nanos, and he's even said before in the past that he’s best friends with Nanos because he can call him at any time even when he’s drunk, or Sheriff Nanos is out of the state,” she said.
During morning testimony, she said Garcia’s alleged relationship with Nanos influenced not only her initial decision to not come forward but also why she insisted on having a detective attend the private meeting with her.
When asked by the prosecution if she felt safe during the meeting with Nanos, she said she did not, and that she feared for her career.
Other Arguments
The meeting with the Sheriff was brought up after a cross-examination in which Garcia’s defense focused on potential inconsistencies in the victim’s initial statements.
In the late morning of Dec. 18, the day after the party, Garcia called the victim and told her they had sex. Garcia was her direct supervisor in the school resource officer unit.
“I remember saying that I didn’t remember that. At which point he told me not to say that. He told me not to say that multiple times,” she said in her previous testimony.
That phone call, in which the prosecution argues the victim was made aware for the first time that intercourse had happened, took place an hour before an initial interview with Tucson Police Department detectives. In that statement, she told them nothing happened and refused a rape kit.
Previous testimony maintains she has no memory of the alleged assault because of how much she’d had to drink, but she felt soreness the next morning.
“I did not tell the detectives anything that actually happened or that might have happened, from the beginning of the party to the recollection and what I felt earlier that morning,” she said.
Garcia’s attorney Louis Fidel argued the victim lied to detectives. The victim said she wasn’t ready to come forward that morning
“I kept those details to myself for the shame and embarrassment,” she said.
The victim’s prior statements have painted a complicated history with Garcia. They met at the Corrections Academy in 2007. During the time they were there, they had consensual sex one time, she said.
The defense’s questioning has focused on their social relationship, which the victim said after that one consensual encounter, was limited to two other occasions where they went out socially in a group of other deputies.
Other Witnesses
The prosecution also called cold witness Kate Wills, a former employee of the Scottsdale Police Department with a 22-year history of working with sexual assault victims.
Cold witnesses are given no details about any specific case but are called to provide general subject matter information.
Wills was called as an expert in the counterintuitive behaviors of abuse victims.
“You start noticing behaviors, you hear a lot of the same things over and over when you work with victims of sexual assault,” she said.
Wills described delayed disclosure, a phenomenon she says happens when victims of sexual assault are reluctant to immediately come forward,
“Delayed can look like a few hours, it could be days, months, years when a victim reports it,” she said.
There can be many reasons for the delay, according to Wills’ experience.
“Oftentimes, victims worry about being believed, they worry about being blamed, sometimes they worry about retaliation,” she said.
The jury also heard graphic testimony from a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) that performed the rape kit on the victim.
A DNA expert witness and other law enforcement officers are scheduled for testimony as the trial continues into next week.
Read more about the first day of testimony here.
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