Global Courant
Five years after prosecutors announced charges against a Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend, portraying them as serial predators who drugged vulnerable women, a judge has dismissed the last remaining sexual charges in the case.
Ruling that there was not enough evidence to send Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley to trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting two women, Orange County Supreme Court Justice Michael Leversen handed the defendants a major victory Friday, but an incomplete one. .
The two are still being prosecuted for slipping GHB into one of the women’s drink, the judge ruled. Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon once named the county’s “Most Eligible Bachelor” by a local magazine, also faces two counts of illegal possession of assault weapons, plus charges of possession of cocaine and other drugs.
The case is a tabloid favorite, in part because of Robicheaux’s appearance on the Bravo reality show “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male.”
Defense attorneys have portrayed Robicheaux and Riley, a former school teacher, as partying swingers. Both deny having had consensual sex with either of the accusers.
Following the announcement of charges against the couple in 2018, Orange County prosecutors said more than a dozen women had accused Robicheaux of assaulting them, with some alleging that Riley participated.
Robicheaux was accused of sexually assaulting five women. Riley was charged with involvement in attacks on three.
Attorney Philip Cohen, left, Grant Robicheaux, center, and his girlfriend, Cerissa Riley, leave the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach in 2020.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Then-Dest. Attention. Tony Rackauckas said a search of Robicheaux’s possession turned up “dozens or hundreds” of apparently incriminating home videos, some of them featuring women “highly intoxicated with no ability to consent or resist”.
Rackauckas characterized the pair as predators who found victims in Newport Beach bars and restaurants and lured them to Robicheaux’s home for sex after dousing them with drugs. One prosecutor compared them to “Bonnie and Clyde.”
The case soon became entangled in politics, with Todd Spitzer, running for district attorney, accusing Rackauckas of embellishing and exploiting the case in hopes of winning re-election.
After Spitzer won, he ordered a review of the case and announced that there were “serious problems with evidence”. There were no videos of incapacitated women being sexually assaulted, he said.
But Orange County Supreme Court Justice Gregory Jones refused to let Spitzer dismiss the charges and took the rare step of removing the local prosecutor’s office from the case, saying Spitzer’s stance had left his accusers “hopelessly conflicted.”
The California Attorney General’s office announced last August that it would prosecute the defendants, focusing on allegations made by the remaining two victims.
