Negotiated Justice: Convictions difficult, plea bargains plentiful in sex assault cases

Nancy Crowden was enjoying life in Alaska in March of last year when a call from Miami-Dade Police abruptly brought back memories she’d long since buried.

“I thought it was a joke,” Crowden told NBC6 Investigates. “I really had no memory of it.”

The call was about a traumatic event from January 1985. Crowden recalled meeting two men at a Miami Beach bar, who later raped her in an open field along Northwest 9th Street, west of Red Road.

“My mind had totally forgotten it,” she explained. “I mean, it’s almost 40 years.”

Meanwhile, in a Miami-Dade Police interrogation room, 4,000 miles away from Crowden, officers questioned one of the men, Rivero, about the assault.

“What’s going on, man?” Rivero asked the detectives, unaware of the evidence they had.

“You know how we know you raped her?” one detective asked. “Because your DNA was inside her.”

Rivero looked confused as the detective continued, “You can’t change your DNA. So we know it’s you, and this happened in 1985.”

When shown a photo of Crowden from the 1980s, Rivero claimed he didn’t recognize her.