SEQUIM — The state Court of Appeals took the final step Tuesday in reversing the 2009 conviction of accused rapist Corean O. Barnes.
A Clallam County Superior Court jury found the former certified nurse’s assistant of Sequim guilty of two counts of second-degree rape and one count of unlawful imprisonment of a woman who was trying to break up with him — and who had recorded the alleged assaults on a hidden digital audio recorder.
Barnes, 28, was sentenced to 119 months — just under 10 years — to life.
But Sept. 28, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Barnes’ appeal, and Tuesday, the court denied Clallam County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brian Wendt’s motion for reconsideration, remanding the case back to county Superior Court.
County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly vowed Wednesday to file by Friday a new complaint against Barnes with identical charges, which would lead to a new trial.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Kelly said.
“This man raped a woman.”
In its ruling, three Division II appeals court judges agreed the evidence is “more than clear” that Barnes sexually assaulted the woman twice over several hours Aug. 15, 2008, in Sequim — once when she picked him up in her car and a second time at a friend’s house.
But in throwing out the conviction, the panel agreed that Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams overstepped the state Privacy Act at Barnes’ trial by allowing as evidence the woman’s approximately four-hour digital recording.
The Privacy Act requires the consent of all parties before a private conversation can be recorded and quoted legal precedent that “puts a high value on the privacy of communications.”
There is a “threats exception” to the mutual-consent rule that was not followed in the Barnes trial, the court said.
The consent of one party to a recorded conversation is allowed for recordings that “convey threats of extortion, blackmail, bodily harm or other unlawful requests or demands,” according to state law.
“Courts strictly construe this exception,” the appeals court said.
“A number of recorded remarks that went before the [Barnes] jury did not convey threats, either directly or indirectly, and did not fall under the exceptions to the Privacy Act.”
Williams, the appeals court said, “should have conducted a more detailed analysis of the recording before admitting those selected portions that met the threats exception to the Privacy Act.”
A 74-page transcript of the recording included sometimes-threatening comments by Barnes toward the woman and her narratives of the incidents when Barnes was not present — when she was waiting for him to get out of a meeting, according to court documents.
A new jury “could easily come back with a not-guilty verdict, partially because of conversations that will be omitted,” Olympia lawyer Jodi Backlund said Wednesday in an interview.
Barnes discussed the ruling Wednesday in a telephone interview from Coyote Ridge Corrections Center, a medium-security facility in Connell.
“I’m kind of ecstatic,” Barnes said.
He and the woman were intimate for about a year before the incident, Barnes said.
On the day they discussed splitting up, the woman entrapped him, he said, by hiding the recorder in a purse, though the appeals court said she bought the recorder because “she feared for her safety” after Barnes threatened to blow up her house and car.
Barnes said the recording was the only evidence against him, that the sex was consensual on one rape charge and that regarding the other rape charge, he stopped when she said she wanted him to stop.
The woman reported the rapes “several days later,” according to the court’s decision.
The 2009 trial was the second for Barnes that year on the charges.
A mistrial was declared in the first trial after the county Prosecutor’s Office brought out testimony about a domestic violence batterers’ group meeting Barnes had attended, according to court documents.
The court had ruled the testimony about the meeting could not be admitted.
