Despite a victim testifying that she had no memory of an assault, the Alaska Court of Appeals upheld a Juneau Superior Court’s 2015 decision to convict a Juneau man of third-degree assault.
George Steven Strom III, 34, was found guilty in February 2015 of assaulting a woman in her residence, despite the fact that the woman testified that she had no memory of the assault. She testified to the jury at the time that she was in a form of therapy that taught her to block out any bad memories.
As a result, state prosecutors at the time introduced the woman’s prior statements to police officers about the assault as substantive evidence. Prosecutors also showed the jury photographs of the woman’s injuries and the testimony of the woman’s mother who said the woman had redness on one eye and complained of being sore.
At the close of the trial, Strom’s attorney Timothy Ayer argued to Judge Louis Menendez that the woman’s previous statements were inconsistent and didn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Strom was guilty, asking for a motion of acquittal from Menendez. Menendez disagreed and denied Ayer’s motion, and then the jury then found Strom guilty.
On April 28, 2015, Strom was sentenced to 60 months in prison, with 24 suspended (so 36 months, or three years, to serve). It was the sentence that the state had asked for, as Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Polasky pointed out prior to sentencing that Strom had 37 previous convictions, 13 of which were assault-type convictions that involved force and fighting. Strom is currently out of custody on probation.
Strom appealed, pointing at the Court of Appeals 1986 decision in Brower v. State. In that case, the victim explicitly recanted an earlier statement accusing John M. Brower of sexual assault and attempted sexual assault. Brower appealed that the fact that the victim totally recanted their earlier testimony should lead to an acquittal, and the Court of Appeals agreed.
Judge Marjorie K. Allard of the Court of Appeals wrote a memorandum opinion last week explaining that Strom’s case is not the same as Brower’s case because the victim did not completely redact her earlier statements.
Allard pointed out that there’s enough evidence — the victim’s earlier statements, photographs of the injuries, police observations of the injuries, the mother’s observation of the injuries and the fact that the victim called her mother for a ride to the hospital after the assault — that a jury had enough evidence to convict Strom.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
