 Patrick McAllister
On April 26, 2010—less than 40 days later—S.L. called her sister and said that McAllister had raped her on several occasions and had repeatedly kicked her in the head and body.
Police were called. There were language difficulties—S.L. spoke Waray-Waray, a regional language in the Philippines, and Tagalog, another language spoken in the Philippines. Although S.L. spoke some English, police were initially unable to determine whether a crime had occurred.
In August 2011, McAllister, who was never interviewed by investigators, was indicted on 10 counts of third-degree rape, 18 counts of second-degree rape, and 11 counts of fourth-degree assault. He was released on bond.
Prior to the trial, McAllister’s defense attorney agreed that evidence that S.L. had a sexually transmitted disease (STD) would not be presented to the jury.
In August 2012, McAllister went to trial in Jefferson County Superior Court.
S.L. testified that she met McAllister over the telephone in 2008 through her sister and her sister’s husband, Temur Perkins. At the time, S.L. lived with her parents in the Philippines. S.L. said that McAllister eventually spoke of her coming to the U.S. and getting married. She told the jury that McAllister came in May 2008, and stayed at her family’s home for several days. After he left, she said, she agreed to come to the U.S. to marry him.
She arrived at McAllister’s home on March 14, 2010. Between March 18 and April 25, she said, McAllister raped and assaulted her. She testified about the specific dates using a calendar that she said she had prepared.
S.L. said that McAllister repeatedly kicked her with his right foot. After being raped on April 25, S.L. said she “decided to go.” The following day, she called her sister, Rosemarie Perkins, who called police.
During cross-examination, McAllister’s attorney asked S.L. to demonstrate how she was kicked, and she showed how he always kicked her with his right foot. She admitted that she had said at a preliminary hearing that she wanted to stay in the U.S. if there was a way to do so, and that testifying against McAllister assured she would stay. She also admitted that at the preliminary hearing, she falsely said that McAllister had kicked her in the head.
McAllister’s attorney suggested that S.L. came to the U.S. and falsely accused McAllister to get a special visa given to crime victims (U-visa) who testify in court, and that she actually had a husband back in the Philippines. She was asked about a sheet of paper that she left behind when she left McAllister. The letter, written in Tagalog, said that she missed her husband. “My husband, I love you so much,” she wrote. “Don’t forget that I always love you even if I’m far away. You know I always think about you.”
S.L. admitted that the words were not written about McAllister, but claimed there was no husband and that she only wrote the words to keep herself busy because she had no one to talk with.
S.L. also admitted that she didn’t initially say that McAllister had raped her, but explained that it was because she was afraid of him and was “nervous and scared.” She said she felt that trial was “the time to say the truth.”
Detective Barb Garrett testified that she conducted four interviews with S.L. The first, with her sister Rosemarie translating, was on April 28, 2010—two days after S.L. first called her sister. Garrett said that interview was unsuccessful due to Rosemarie’s presence and S.L.’s “extreme” nervousness. A second interview, conducted in Tagalog with a translator, also failed to elicit details about what happened, Garrett said.
In October 2010, six months later, Garrett conducted a third interview in Waray-Waray with a translator. In May 2011, she conducted a fourth interview, largely in English. During those two interviews, S.L. detailed being assaulted.
Garrett admitted during cross-examination that S.L.’s accounts changed over time. During one interview, S.L. said she “did not enjoy sex with McAllister” on five occasions. At one point, S.L. said she had been raped the very first night they were together—an account she later admitted was false.
Although the Jefferson County sex assault protocol calls for a sexual assault examination to be done within five days of a complaint being made, S.L. did not go for such an exam until June 2010. Jolene Culbertson, a sexual assault nurse, testified that she examined S.L., who was complaining of stomach pain and bleeding. Culbertson referred S.L. for urgent care for a sexually transmitted disease. She testified that she could not tell how long the lesions existed.
Wendy White, a Jefferson County Health Department nurse, testified she examined S.L. two days later, on June 18, 2010, and found what appeared to be bruises in S.L.’s vagina that could have been caused by sexual abuse. She said there were other possible explanations as well. McAllister’s defense attorney did not question White about the fact that Culbertson did not mention any seeing any bruises in the examination two days earlier.
White also testified that S.L. indicated on paperwork she filled out prior to the examination that she had not been “hit, kicked or punched by anyone in the last year.”
Three of McAllister’s friends who had socialized with McAllister and S.L., and attended a Bible study with them testified that S.L. seemed happy and was affectionate to McAllister.
McAllister’s mother testified that her son and S.L. spent a week visiting her from April 15 to April 22, and that during the visit she gave S.L. a wedding dress. S.L. appeared happy and called her “mom,” she testified.
Gerardo Sabiniano testified that in 2010, he was living in the Philippines and was helping S.L. get the proper immigration approval to come to the U.S. He said he accompanied her to the U.S. embassy. While she was inside, he held onto her cell phone and when it rang, he answered it. The caller identified himself as S.L.’s boyfriend. Sabiniano questioned S.L. about the caller. She told him it was a “boy…of her age” from the Philippines and that she was “really in love” with him. Sabiniano testified that S.L. told him that her family needed money and that obtaining a visa would help her family financially.
An immigration attorney testified that S.L. arrived on a “K-1 fiancée” visa, which would expire in 90 days unless she got married to a U.S. citizen. The only options for someone who did not marry were to return home or claim to be the victim of a crime and apply for a U visa, which is granted to individuals who help law enforcement prosecute a crime. A U visa lasts four years, and after three years, a U visa holder may petition for permanent resident status.
McAllister testified and denied raping or assaulting S.L. He said they had been intimate four or five times at his home. He described a visit to Seattle with friends during which they took pictures in a photo booth and had a good time. He also said that he had an artificial right knee that “didn’t work right,” and that his right ankle also had a chronic injury that kept him from working. McAllister said it was impossible for him to kick with his right leg as S.L. claimed.
McAllister told the jury that when he came home on April 26, 2010 to find that the police had been summoned, S.L. told him, “Honey, I didn’t want to do this. This wasn’t my doing.”
In rebuttal, S.L. testified that she appeared happy in photographs and among McAllister’s friends because McAllister had ordered her to pretend she was happy.
During closing argument, the prosecutor told the jury that it was implausible that S.L. had scheme to meet an American on the telephone, make him fall in love, and then come to the U.S. to fabricate allegations of rape and assault to obtain a U visa. The prosecutor also noted that the defense failed to introduce any medical records to support McAllister’s claim of being unable to kick with his right leg. The defense argued the case was essentially S.L.’s word against McAllister’s, and that S.L. was lying. The defense also noted that the medical evidence was based on examinations performed two months after S.L. claimed she was raped.
Before the jury began deliberating, the trial judge dismissed five second-degree rape counts and three assault counts based upon S.L.’s lack of memory about those incidents. On August 10, 2012, the jury convicted McAllister of 10 counts of third-degree rape, 13 counts of second-degree rape, and 8 counts of fourth-degree assault. He was sentenced 20 years and 10 months in prison.
In 2013, McAllister was charged and pled guilty to immigration fraud in federal court for failing to disclose on his petition filed as part of S.L.’s application for a fiancée visa that he had been convicted of misdemeanor assault and domestic violence more than 20 years earlier involving a woman he was dating at the time.
In September 2014, the Washington Court of Appeals upheld his convictions. In July 2016, McAllister filed a personal restraint petition with the court of appeals seeking post-conviction relief because his trial attorney had provided an inadequate legal defense.
In July 2017, the appeals court granted the petition and reversed McAllister’s convictions. The court ruled that the trial defense attorney had provided an inadequate defense in several areas by failing to:
• Present medical records and the testimony of McAllister’s physician that McAllister was “not physically capable of kicking (S.L.) in the manner she described in her trial testimony.”
• Present medical evidence that S.L. had a sexually transmitted disease and that McAllister did not, and that her lesions were likely the result of her STD and not from being raped.
• Present evidence that the bruises seen on S.L.’s vagina in June 2010—two months after she left McAllister’s home—were actually less than two weeks old.
• Cross-examine S.L. about numerous statements she made, including changing the date when she was first raped by McAllister, whether she had boyfriend in the Philippines, her failure to remember when he first kicked her, and her initial statement to police that she had no bruises.
In addition, the court found that the prosecution failed to disclose the third page of a report of an interview with S.L. conducted by Detective Garrett on May 10, 2010. The third page, discovered by McAllister’s brother in a public records request, quoted S.L. as saying that “April 9th was the last time (McAllister) raped me, we never had sex after that, but he continued to kick me frequently.”
That statement contradicted S.L.’s trial testimony that she sought help on April 26, 2010 because McAllister had raped her the night before on April 25. The court noted that McAllister’s post-conviction attorney, John Cain, had uncovered an email from the trial prosecutor to Detective Garrett in August 2011—a year prior to trial—reporting that the prosecutor did not have the third page of the report.
“Had McAllister received the third page of the statement, it would have provided invaluable impeachment evidence,” the court said.
In October 2017, McAllister was released pending a retrial.
Cain later discovered by reviewing other records that McAllister’s brother obtained that the prosecution had not disclosed the existence of a report of a meeting with S.L., the prosecutor, and Detective Garrett in June 2010. At the meeting, S.L. showed notes listing dates when she said she was assaulted. The investigator’s report said that the prosecutor instructed S.L. to “take the calendar back to her home and reorganize her notes in a better way so that they are very clear to understand. (The prosecutor) then said he would need the calendar at a later time for the record.”
The defense also learned that S.L. did not present the requested calendar until May 2011—nearly a year later. S.L.’s original notes were not disclosed to the defense prior to trial. Nor did the prosecution disclose that the calendar S.L. testified about at trial was prepared at the direction of the prosecutor about two months after she first reported she had been assaulted.
The defense also learned that in July 2010, S.L. opened a Twitter account that she shared with a boyfriend who was living in the Philippines. The defense also discovered by that by May 2011, S.L. had moved in with a different man, even though she had submitted a declaration to immigration authorities seeking residency status that she was afraid of men.
And the defense also learned that four pages of the report from Culbertson, the nurse who performed the first examination of S.L., had not been disclosed. Those pages definitively showed that there were no bruises on S.L. two days prior to the examination by White, who reported finding bruises.
On April 25, 2018, Jefferson County District Attorney Michael Haas filed a motion to dismiss the charges. In the motion, Haas said that the medical evidence regarding the bruises and lesions “should never have been provided to the jury” because S.L. was not examined until two months after she claimed she was raped.
“We knew then and we know now that the injuries…could not have been caused by Mr. McAllister given the lapse of time,” the motion said. “Why this information was allowed to be heard by the jury is beyond me.”
Haas also said he took notice that McAllister had taken a polygraph exam and his denials of any sex or physical assaults were deemed to be truthful. “At the end of the day, I believe it would be impossible to attain a conviction in this case again,” he said in the motion.
On April 26, 2018, Jefferson County Superior Court Judge Keith Harper granted the motion and dismissed the charges.
– Maurice Possley
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