The lawyer of a Penn professor accused of raping a woman in his office is trying to reduce the number of charges his client will be tried for.
After a pretrial conference Wednesday, parties in the Tracy McIntosh rape case will meet next week to discuss the possibility of reducing the charges.
McIntosh, formerly a professor of neurosurgery at Penn, allegedly raped a 23-year-old woman in his Hayden Hall office last September. At a July 31 arraignment, he was charged with rape, indecent assault, false imprisonment and related charges.
The woman, a niece of McIntosh's friend, was on deferred admission status from Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, the Philadelphia Daily News previously reported.
Tom Bergstrom, McIntosh's attorney, said he will discuss a motion to quash the charges of rape, false imprisonment and unlawful restraint. In the motion, Bergstrom will attempt to show that the "evidence at the preliminary hearing does not support the element of the crime," and therefore should be prevented from proceeding to the trial stage.
According to Bergstrom, "it's hard to say" whether any lesser charges will go to trial if the major charges do not.
Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's office, would not comment on the case or the likelihood of trial.
McIntosh, who had been a member of the faculty since 1992, remains on administrative leave from the University pending resolution of the case, although the University's own independent investigation into the incident yielded no evidence supporting the woman's allegations.
