PORT ANGELES — A second trial for accused rapist Martin C. Perez will be rescheduled next week because of witness unavailability.
Perez, 40, is charged with first- and second-degree rape and second-degree assault for an alleged attack on a 45-year-old woman outside of Forks last September.
A jury could not reach a verdict after a one-week trial in March. A second trial is set for May 7.
Clallam County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy announced Friday that a key witness, Sheriff’s Detective Amy Bundy, will be at training during the second week of May.
“I’m in the process of checking with the rest of my witnesses to confirm their availability, so I suggest we set this matter over a week or two so that we can set it to a good trial date,” Kennedy said in a Friday status hearing.
The hearing was reset for 9 a.m. Friday.
Perez, who listened to the court proceedings through an interpreter, maintains that he had consensual sex with the alleged victim.
The woman testified that she was raped by Perez after she brought an axe and a smoothie to his job site near the east end of Calawah Way last Sept. 6.
She told a secretary at a Forks church that she was raped shortly after the incident, Bundy wrote in the affidavit for probable cause.
Perez initially denied having any sexual contact with the woman, Bundy said.
Defense attorney John Hayden of Clallam Public Defender has argued that there was no physical evidence to suggest that Perez committed a rape or an assault.
The seven-man, five-woman jury deliberated for one day before declaring a mistrial March 9.
Perez is being held in the Clallam County jail on $25,000 bail.
