By Katherine E. Finkelstein
Manhattan prosecutors have proposed a plea bargain with no further jail time for a Columbia University graduate student facing a new trial on charges that he kidnapped and sexually abused a woman he had met on the Internet, say the student's mother and others familiar with the negotiations.
In 1998, Oliver Jovanovic was convicted of kidnapping, sexually abusing and assaulting the woman, and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. But the conviction was over-turned last year when the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that the trial judge had erred in excluding certain evidence.
The retrial of Mr. Jovanovic, who complained bitterly during his first trial that he was the victim of overzealous prosecutors, is set to begin in March in State Supreme Court. The judge, William A. Wetzel, who was also the judge in the first trial, has given both sides until Dec 13 to conclude any negotiations.
Sabina Javonovic, the student's mother, said that the deal broached by prosecutors some time last month would require her son to plead guilty to some charge or charges, but that no details have been discussed.
"I understand that all that has been offered is a plea bargain for time served," she said.
Mrs. Jovanovic said that her son, who was weeks away from a doctorate in microbiology when he was arrested in 1996, has made no decision on pursuing the offer. He served 20 months in prison before his release last December. Mr. Jovanovic's lawyer, Paul F. Callan, said of plea negotiations, "Oliver's position has been that, as a matter of principle, he's not going to admit to something he didn't do."
The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, declined to discuss the case.
If prosecutors and Mr. Jovanovic were to agree to a deal that included no additional prison time, it would amount to a remarkable turn in a case that gained notoriety because Mr. Jovanovic had met the woman on the Internet and went on to raise questions about legal protections for rape victims and to include allegations of prosecutorial overreaching.
At the 1998 trial, Mr. Jovanovic was convicted of a 20-hour attack on the woman, a 20-year-old student at Barnard College, and someone he had come to know during regular, often explicit conversations conducted over the Internet. Prosecutors alleged, and a jury agreed, that Mr. Jovanovic had tied the woman to the frame of a futon at the apartment, burned her with hot wax and sexually abused her with a police nightstick.
From the time of his arrest, Mr. Jovanovic insisted that his encounter with the woman, while sadomasochistic, had nonetheless been consensual. During an often grueling cross-examination, Mr. Jovanovic's lawyer, Jack Litman, sought to undermine the woman's claims of physical injury and to show that she had willingly engaged in the encounter.
During that trial, Mr. Jovanovic's lawyers sought to introduce an email exchange into evidence, arguing that the correspondence supported their claim of a consensual, non-violent encounter. But Judge Wetzel refused to admit the e-mail messages, citing the state's rape shield laws, which are intended to protect the victim's past from undue scrutiny.
After Mr. Jovanovic was convicted and sentenced, his lawyer appealed Judge Wetzel's exclusion of the e-mail messages.
At a news conference a year after Mr. Jovanovic was sentenced, relatives of the woman came forward to raise questions about her credibility. The woman's relatives, including a grandmother and uncle, later sent a letter to the appellate court expressing their concerns and alleging that the woman had a history of making false accusations. "We are disgusted about what she has done to Oliver Jovanovic, his family, our family," they wrote.
The appellate court last year was persuaded by Mr. Jovanovic's lawyers and ordered a new trial, ruling that the trial judge had excluded the e-mail messages improperly. Judge David B. Saxe, writing for the majority, said, "Jovanovic was precluded not only from bringing out the degree to which the complainant seemed to be inviting sadomasochism," but from exploring whether she was "a less reliable narrator of events than she appeared to be at trial."
According to the appellate ruling, the messages included one, sent two days before the attack, in which the woman wrote Mr. Jovanovic that she was dating a sadomasochist. "Now I'm his slave," she wrote, "and it's painful, but the fun of telling my friends, ŒHey, I'm a sadomasochistic, more than outweighs the torment,"
In a later message, she responded affirmatively to a question from Mr. Jovanovic about whether she was "submissive." In another, she used the slang term for a submissive partner in a sadomasochistic relationship to describe herself.
At the time of the appellate court's ruling, some legal experts said they saw wisdom in its decision, but a number of advocates for women and rape victims expressed alarm at what they feared was the possible erosion of the state's protections for rape victims, protections that included limits on how much of one's prior sexual conduct was admissible at trials.
It is unclear to what degree the possible introduction of the disputed e-mail messages or the potential testimony of the woman's relatives has played a role in the negotiations between the defense and prosecution.
Mr. Callan, Mr. Jovanovic's lawyer, said that if the case goes to trial, there is a "very substantial likelihood of an acquittal."
"The appellate division has ruled that she can be cross-examined about all of the e-mails she sent to Oliver, and that could damage her credibility," he said.