SJC overturns rape conviction of former Methuen police officer
By Globe Staff
The state’s highest court today overturned the conviction of a Methuen police officer who was found guilty of raping an intoxicated woman in 2000 whom he drove home because she was too impaired to drive.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that former officer David Blache is entitled to a new trial because the original judge gave improper instructions to the jury. The court ruled that the trial judge did not adequately explain that the state had to prove that the victim was too intoxicated to consent to sex, not that she was merely high and drunk.
“The evidence presented conflicting views about whether the complainant was capable of consenting, and if she was capable, whether she did so,” Associate Justice Margot Botsford wrote for the court. “We cannot say that the errors in the charge were not prejudicial. The defendant is entitled to a new trial.”
The case dates to Aug. 18, 2000, when Methuen police responded to reports of a 26-year-old woman who was drunk and belligerent. According to testimony given at trial, the woman had been drinking, smoking marijuana, and took Klonopin, an antianxiety medication.
The woman could not afford a taxi so Blache, with the approval of his supervisors, gave her a ride home. The woman later told police that he parked next to a dumpster off Route 28 and raped her in the back of a police cruiser. Blache has said that they had consensual sex at her home Haverhill.
A jury found him guilty in 2002, and Blache was sentenced to eight to 10 years in prison.
