RI police officer to stand trial on rape charge

[March 18, 2010]  PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- A Providence police officer accused of raping a woman in a deserted police substation and then showing up to take a report after she called 911 heads to trial this week at an already difficult time for the department.

Marcus Huffman faces charges of first-degree sexual assault. Opening statements are scheduled for Thursday morning in Providence Superior Court, and the trial is expected to take a couple of weeks.

Prosecutors say Huffman was on patrol in March 2007 when he offered a ride home to a 19-year-old woman who had been turned away from a club because she appeared intoxicated. He allegedly drove the woman to an abandoned police substation and is accused of raping her there.

Prosecutors have said they have a video showing Huffman entering the substation with the woman, then leaving separately before she did, and that they have recovered Huffman's semen from the woman's boxer shorts.

He was also allegedly one of three officers who responded to take a report after the woman called 911 from a relative's house.

Huffman has been suspended without pay, according to a department spokesman.

Huffman declined to comment in court this week and his lawyer, Robert Caron, has not returned repeated phone calls seeking comment. His former lawyer said at the time of Huffman's indictment that there was no direct evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial opens against the backdrop of pending criminal charges against a handful of other members of the police force.

One officer, Robert DeCarlo, pleaded not guilty last month to charges of beating a restrained man with a flashlight, and three other officers -- including a narcotics detective, a school resource officer and a former driver for Mayor David Cicilline -- were arrested two weeks ago for allegedly participating in a cocaine-dealing operation.

Those officers have not entered pleas yet.

State police say that investigation, called Operation Deception, is continuing and that more arrests are expected.

[Associated Press; By ERIC TUCKER]

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