Former Westminster, Calif., police detective Anthony Orban was found guilty on Wednesday of kidnapping and raping a 25-year-old waitress at gunpoint. Orban had claimed that the antidepressant drug Zoloft was responsible for his actions.
The jury, made up of eight women and four men, found him “guilty on two counts of rape, two counts of forced oral copulation, two counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object, one count of making a criminal threat, and a sentence enhancement of using a firearm in commission of a kidnapping,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
Orban’s defense attorney James Blatt claimed his client was under the influence of Zoloft and consequently should not be held accountable for raping the victim because of his “unconscious” state.
A psychiatrist defended Orban, testifying he “had stopped taking the prescribed antidepressant, then resumed it at full dose, provoking a psychotic break during which he was not fully aware of his actions.”
Prosecutors found the claim unlikely since the excuse conflicted with the medical consensus of Zoloft’s side effects.
A spokesperson for Pfizer, the company that makes Zoloft, said in a statement: “There is extensive science supporting the safety and efficacy of Zoloft, and the medicine carries accurate, science-based and FDA-approved information on its benefits and risks,” ABC News reports.
Orban, who was intoxicated, kidnapped the victim at gunpoint and forced her to drive to a Fontana storage facility so that he could rape her.
“He was a highly trained officer who wanted to have sex. He had sex on the mind. Don’t forget that,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Debbie Ploghaus told jurors in her closing arguments.
The waitress testified that Orban “chambered a round in his semi-automatic service pistol, shoving the barrel deep into her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks,” the Times reports.
“He said if I cried, he would kill me,” the victim told jurors. “Then he pulled the gun out and said, ‘I think we’ll continue this in the desert.'”
The victim jumped out of the defendant’s car and ran to find safety at a nearby liquor store when Orban was sidetracked by a cellphone call.
Blatt said Orban dedicated his life to protecting the community and that the only conceivable explanation for his actions was the side effects of the antidepressant. Blatt told the jury, “At the time he was not aware, not aware of the torturous things he had done.”