Orr's jail sex trial begins
2 of 3 alleged victims take stand

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Testimony began Tuesday in the Brian Orr case.

Orr faces three counts of criminal penetration stemming from accusations made by three Wyoming women, who were incarcerated in the McKinley County Adult Detention Center in 2003 and 2004.

Two of the three accusers testified Tuesday, claiming that they had a boyfriend-girlfriend type of relationship with Orr while they were incarcerated. Orr at the time was a captain at the jail.

One of the women claimed that on one occasion as she was being moved from one area of the jail to another Orr put a hand down her pants and inserted his finger inside her. The other woman claimed Orr did the same thing to her once when she was in his office.

Both women claimed that Orr made promises to each of them about a future after they got out of jail, brought them gifts and gave them favorable treatment.

Orr, who was terminated from his position after the charges were made, was also sued in civil court by the three women. Also named in the suit were McKinley County and Management Training Center, the private company that ran the jail at the time.

A settlement was eventually made in the civil suit and McKinley County officials said that no county money was involved. MTC and its insurance company agreed to pay the settlement, the terms of which were kept confidential, although one of the accusers at the trial said she received $55,000 as her share of the settlement.

This civil suit is expected to play a major role in the criminal case with Steve Seeger, Orr's defense attorney, asking the accusers how the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit on behalf of the female inmates, got involved in the case in the first place.

Both women testified that the ACLU contacted them and not the other way around.

This led Mike Calligan, chief deputy prosecutor for the McKinley County's District Attorney's Office, to ask permission to call to the stand Wednesday one of the ACLU attorneys to explain how the organization got involved in the case.

That apparently is going to happen although Seeger had reservations about what the ACLU attorney could testify to since the settlement was confidential.

But Calligan argued that the testimony from the ACLU attorney was necessary since it was apparent, at least to him, that Seeger was planning to claim that the three women cooked up the scheme to go after Orr in an effort to get some money from the jail after they filed a lawsuit.

"We need to (call the ACLU attorney) to put this into proper perspective because of the innuendoes that this has all been a setup or an attempt to frame (Orr)," Calligan said.

But Seeger said that even if he planned "to go into that zone," he still felt that having the ACLU attorney testify would bring forth objections on his part because of relevancy.

He wanted District Court Judge Robert Aragon to rule against allowing the ACLU attorney to testify because of relevancy, but Aragon said he couldn't do that because he didn't know what kinds of questions the prosecutors were going to ask.

He said if Seegar wanted to have a hearing on this question before trial began on Wednesday, he would allow it.