Luke found not guilty of U. City rape

The man police have accused of sexually assaulting four women in the campus area was found innocent of one of the assaults Friday by a Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge. Judge Craig Lord, after a day-long trial, found the 38-year-old Luke not guilty of attempted rape, burglary and related charges in the assault of a CHOP doctor near campus because of insufficient evidence, according to Assistant District Attorney Jeanette Synnestvedt. Luke was also found not guilty in August for the alleged rape of a University employee at 41st and Spruce streets, but he still faces another attempted rape charge and an indecent assault charge. The remaining two cases will likely go to trial in October. Luke, dressed in a yellow sweater and brown pants, was emotionless during the testimony of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia doctor he was accused of attempting to rape. The doctor testified Friday that she was taking a shower early in the morning of February 15, 1988, when she heard a noise in her apartment, which is in a building on 42nd Street between Locust and Walnut streets. She got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around herself and was ready to investigate the noise, when she saw a man she identified as Luke standing in her bathroom doorway, she said. According to the doctor's testimony, she saw Luke's boots first and then screamed, but became silent when he pulled the towel she was wearing up to her neck. The doctor told the judge she felt her screaming made Luke nervous and she was afraid he would hurt her. Her attacker pushed her to her knees and then kneeled down on the floor above her, according to the doctor. "I asked him, 'What do you want?' and he said, 'You,' " she told the court. She said she turned to look at the man, dressed in a heavy grey jacket, baggy pants and wearing a cap with a tassel, but when she looked up, he punched her in her eye. "He spread my legs and I felt his finger in my vagina," sher said, adding that when she heard him pull down his pants' zipper, she decided had better do something to avoid being raped. She told the court that Luke then reached up to the sink and washed his hands, and then got up and walked to the window he used to enter. Before he left, she said that her attacker wished her, "Good morning, honey." The prosecution's case was weakened, however, when she selected the wrong man in a six-man line-up months after the incident, according to the testimony of a Philadelphia Police Major Crimes Division supervisor. According to the supervisor, Luke, the number five man in the line, looked remarkably similar in slides shown to the court to the number two man, whom the doctor chose as her attacker. She explained in her testimony that she made her selection based on the "behavior" of the number two man. She said the man was jittery and constantly looked down at the floor, while the rest of the men in the line up were relatively calm. After she told supervisor her selection, the men were told to leave the line-up box, and, she said, when she saw the profile of Luke, she realized she made a mistake. She said she asked the supervisor if she could see the line-up again, but he refused to repeat the process. Assistant District Attorney Synnestvedt also questioned the first officer who arrived at the scene, who testified that the doctor was hysterical and that he found an open window with a broken screen. During her cross-examination by Stephen Gross, Luke's attorney, she at times turned pale and was visably shaken, according to Synnestvedt. "Typically in rape cases, the defense attorney goes hard on the victim, and in this case, that was no exception," Synnestvedt said. "His style was extremely aggressive, more so than the average case I try." "The witness later said she would never put herself through this," Synnestvedt added. "She was emotionally distraught after the testimony." According to Synnestvedt, "nothing much came out in cross-examination." Synnestvedt said that Judge Lord rendered a fair decision and that Luke was found not guilty because of insufficient evidence. "He did not find her not credible," Synnestvedt explained. "We just didn't have enough [evidence]." "Police don't have enough equipment or people to [dust for fingerprints]," Synnestvedt said. "Very rarely is a sex crime scene prosecuted like a homicide scene." The two remaining charges Luke faces, one sexual assault and a second attempted rape, are "stronger," according to Synnestvedt.

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