Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sex | Travis Masse Trial: Closing Arguments Underway In Broomfield Sex Case

The student asked him for a picture of the "long lost friend I used to play with," Werner read.

Masse responded by sending a photo of his penis.

"So he knows exactly what to send her," Werner told the jury.

Masse texts her about wanting to have sex with her, the prosecutor said.

After she responds "Good, that's the way I like it," Masse writes "I know."

Werner said the former student then wrote: "I'm glad you remember."

"'I know' - His words, ladies and gentlemen," Werner said. "How does he know? Because when they were in California, he had sexual intercourse with her."

The prosecutor asked the jury to consider why a young woman would come into a courtroom to testify in front of 13 strangers about "matters so intimate and so disgusting" if they weren't true.

She said Masse met his alleged victim when she was 15 and groomed her to a point where she was willing to have sex with him.

Werner asked the jury why Masse and his former student would exchange nearly 9,000 text messages in three months if there wasn't something more coming out of it.

"Do you think he's doing this for nothing?" she asked.

The jury was handed the case and began deliberations shortly after 4 p.m.

UPDATE 3:17 p.m.: Closing arguments in the sex assault trial of former Broomfield High coach and teacher Travis Masse have just begun, marking the final stage in the four-day court proceeding.

Prosecutor Lisa Hunt has gotten up to address the jury.

District Judge Thomas Ensor has given each side 30 minutes to make their closings.


UPDATE 2:20 p.m.: Former Broomfield High teacher and coach Travis Masse denied on the stand this afternoon ever having gone to the eighth floor of the Hotel Huntington Beach during a 2009 wrestling tournament in California.

"Did you go to the eighth floor?" prosecutor Yvette Werner asked Masse.

"No, there would have been no reason to go to the eighth floor," he replied.

Masse testified that he never left his room, which he shared with fellow coaches, on the night in question.

The issue of Masse's whereabouts on the evening of Jan. 17, 2009, goes to the heart of the prosecution's case, because the alleged victim - Masse's former student and his wrestling team manager - testified earlier this week that she had sex with him in an eighth floor hotel room in California.

She was 17 at the time.

There is no record of Masse renting a room on the eighth floor of the hotel under his own name.

But in a potentially explosive development that came to light late Wednesday, prosecutors told District Judge Thomas Ensor that they had just learned that Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Chris King claimed that he had given his eighth floor room key to Masse for his use on the final night of the trip.

King, whose son wrestled on the team, was leaving a night early.

The prosecution appealed to the judge to allow the information concerning the superintendent and his hotel room into the trial, but the judge said he wouldn't.

He said it was too late to introduce new evidence into the trial and he said he wouldn't allow the jury to hear it.

"If I allowed the people to present this evidence, it would allow the defense to ask for a mistrial to investigate," he said. "I don't think either side wants to go down that road."

King told the Camera at the Broomfield Courthouse this afternoon that he had been subpoenaed to testify on Thursday, but he was never called to the stand.

In a sign that at least one juror was curious about the hotel room issue, a man on the jury asked the judge what had happened to the question posed by the prosecution just before lunch about whether a wrestler's parent had given Masse a hotel room in California.

Ensor told the juror that he and his fellow jurors had the evidence they had and they would be brought back to the court room for jury instructions later this afternoon.

Before the defense rested its case, prosecutors wrapped up their cross-examination of Masse by asking him about his decision to send his alleged victim a picture of his penis and two pictures of him holding his son in March 2010, months after he had been put on administrative leave by the school.

"Yes, I made a terrible mistake," Masse said.

UPDATE 12:25 p.m.: District Judge Thomas Ensor sharply chastised the lead prosecutor this morning for bringing up in front of the jury an issue he had declared off-limits the day before.

Prosecutor Yvette Werner asked Masse during cross-examination just before the lunch break whether a wrestler's parent had given him a room at the California hotel where one of his underage students had accused him of sexually assaulting her.

The prosecutor was referring to a revelation made known Wednesday, when Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Chris King told a detective at the courthouse that he had provided Masse a key to a room that he wasn't going to be able to use that weekend.

King's son wrestled on the Broomfield High team when Masse was coach, and King told the Camera that his son had been knocked out of the tournament early that weekend, so he gave Masse his room key for the final night.

The room was on the eighth floor, which corroborates information provided by the alleged victim.

The judge immediately called the lawyers in the case to the bench and then dismissed the jury.

He launched into Werner with a stern admonishment, saying that the information about the hotel key was new discovery that the defense hadn't been able to examine.

"I made myself very clear on that, and now you are trying to get in the back door," he said. "It's clearly ambush. It violates the defendant's rights to due process."

Werner argued with Ensor, saying she would have introduced the information during the discovery process if she had known about it.

Ensor was unmoved.

"Bottom line is I told you you weren't going to get this in, and you ignored me," he scolded. "As an officer of this court, you are bound to follow the rules of this court - whether you like it or not."

The cross-examination will resume after lunch.

King told the Camera that he didn't report information about the key sooner because he didn't know the case would "hinge" on such a specific allegation.

King has been subpoenaed by prosecutors in the case, but he said he doesn't think he'll be called to testify.

And still, King said, he doesn't know whether the new information has any connection to allegations of sexual assault against Masse.

"I certainly never knew of any wrongdoing on any of these trips that I was in attendance," King said. "I was shocked like everyone else."

King, who said he spoke with the District Attorney's Office about the hotel key again this morning, said it "remains to be seen if it's relevant at all."

"I went on those trips as a parent and did not, of course, as a parent or a superintendent know that anything was wrong," he said.

UPDATE 11:55 a.m.: Prosecutor Yvette Werner struck repeatedly at the theme of deception as she began her cross-examination of former Broomfield teacher and wrestling coach Travis Masse this morning.

She asked Masse if he had a responsibility to his students, his colleagues, his students' parents, and the community at large to act appropriately with his students.

Masse said he did.

Werner asked him if he texted his underage students with sexually explicit messages "under the nose" of his wife, his fellow coaches, and the father of the student who has accused him of sex assault.

"That's deceptive right?" she asked.

"It's deceptive and highly inappropriate," Masse replied.

Werner displayed phone records for the jury that showed that Masse had texted several of his students during the school day.

Before cross-examination began, Masse told the jury that he didn't have sex with one of his underage students at any of the out-of-town wrestling tournaments he attended or at any other time.

His attorney is questioning him in detail about each out-of-town wrestling tournament he attended in late 2008 and early 2009.

UPDATE 10:34 a.m.: The sex assault trial of former Broomfield High School teacher and wrestling coach Travis Masse is starting late this morning because the judge is going through a previously scheduled docket of cases in his court room.

The jury was scheduled to return at 10 a.m. but it looks like the delay will go longer than that.

When the trial resumes, Masse will re-take the stand to be questioned by his attorney. The prosecution will then get the chance to cross-examine him.

Masse, 29, decided late Wednesday to testify on his own behalf. That opens up the opportunity for prosecutors to question him about a case that he goes to trial next month - an allegation that he sent lewd text messages to one of his underage students and asked her for nude photos.

In the current trial, Masse is charged with sex assault on a child after another of his former students at Broomfield High accused him of having sexual contact with her multiple times when she was a minor.

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