Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [140]
As he pretended to examine Smith, Doan asked her if she’d dance for him. Smith said no. “He started his smooth-talking shit again, claiming it was just a joke.”
Then, Smith says, Doan went down on her. Smith said she tried to wriggle away, but she was afraid that if she didn’t cooperate, he wouldn’t pay her.
Doan slowly pulled a dildo from underneath his clothes and began inserting it into her. She kicked him away, but he slapped her in the face with the latex phallus, pinned her down, and raped her.
When it was over, he insisted that she shower. Then he drove her back to the hospital to get her car. On the way there, he suggested that they pick up her kids and get a bite to eat. Smith said no; she just wanted her money. He said he’d pay her later.
Smith never told her husband about the arrangement. In a panic, she called her ex-boyfriend, Maurice. Doan had promised him an extra two hundred dollars for setting them up. Maurice said he’d get her money.
Then Smith called a friend, who encouraged her to go to St. Thomas for a rape exam. She also contacted the police.
Doan was charged with rape. For the first time, he was placed in the Summit County Jail.
AS THE GRAND-JURY HEARING approached, Smith’s story posed serious problems.
She admitted to sticking around after the rape, to allowing Doan to drive her back to her car. She confessed that Maurice had contacted Doan to seek payment. When the six thousand dollars never appeared, she went to police.
None of this would help prosecutors. But it left plenty of ammo for Doan’s lawyer, Jonathan Sinn. “All along, I said this wasn’t a rape case; it was a theft of services,” he says.
Doan claimed that he offered Smith money for sex and that she consented; it was only when he didn’t pay that she cried rape. He denied pretending to be a doctor. “But even if he does lie, if we locked up everyone who claimed to be a doctor to get laid, the jails would be overcrowded,” Sinn says.
The grand jury reduced the indictment from rape to gross sexual imposition. “A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” says Sinn. “They indict any case that shows probable cause. If they aren’t buying that this is rape, you know the victim has serious credibility issues.”
Throughout numerous hearings, Sinn attacked Smith’s character, pointing out that she met Doan in a strip club rumored to house a prostitution ring. He even accused her of being a dancer, though she isn’t.
“It was like, oh, look at this poor little Vietnamese guy, and then look at this slut who’ll grind on anyone for a buck,” Smith says.
Sinn also exposed problems with Smith’s story. “A guy tricking women into having sex by promising them pie-in-the-sky money—it’s a theft case, not a rape case,” he says.
Knowing that they couldn’t get a conviction on Smith’s story alone, the prosecution asked to submit additional evidence, hoping to unfold Doan’s twenty-five-year history.
As he sat in jail, prosecutors and detectives scoured Doan’s favorite pickup joints and strip clubs. They called women from old cases. But each story turned out to be as wobbly as Smith’s, and two victims were already dead. Strippers and drug addicts don’t make good witnesses.
But detectives never contacted their sturdiest witness, Renee. “If they’d have called, I would have been more than happy to testify,” she says.
Finally, in July, prosecutors agreed to a deal. Doan pleaded guilty to assault and soliciting, both misdemeanors. He earned credit for time served and was released in August.
WITHIN A WEEK, Doan was back in the clubs, approaching dancers with his doctor routine, say detectives. “I’d have thought he’d move—or at least start pretending to be a lawyer or something,” Smith says.
Though Doan doesn’t frequent downtown joints anymore, he hasn’t been forgotten. Jim West, operations