LAS VEGAS — A state court judge rejected a bid for a new trial by a Saudi Arabian air force sergeant facing a minimum of 35 years in a Nevada prison after a jury found him guilty of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.
In a strongly worded decision, Clark County District Judge Stefany Miley wrote that Mazen Alotaibi doesn't deserve a retrial just because a witness later claimed that he lied during testimony about how intoxicated Alotaibi was before encountering the boy at the Circus Circus hotel on New Year's Eve 2012.
"Testimony regarding the defendant's presumed level of intoxication is ... at best another handful of sand on an already expansive beach of evidence," the judge wrote.
Miley heard defense attorney Dominic Gentile argue during a hearing in September that Alotaibi was too drunk to drive and too intoxicated to know if he was committing a crime with the boy.
Gentile declined to comment Thursday about the ruling, and didn't immediately respond to a message about whether he would appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court.
Alotaibi, 25, faces sentencing Jan. 28.
"Recantations should be viewed with suspicion," Miley said in her ruling, issued Wednesday. She said she wasn't convinced that the witness, Rashed Alshehri, lied at trial — or that his testimony about Alotaibi drinking affected the verdict.
Prosecutor Jacqueline Bluth had called Alotaibi's intoxication a small detail amid overwhelming DNA and medical evidence and witness testimony that he forced sex on the boy.
Alotaibi didn't testify during his trial in October 2013, but acknowledged in a recorded police interview played for the jury that he drank multiple shots of cognac while partying with friends at a strip club, and that he had sex with the boy after returning to the hotel.
Alotaibi's trial lawyer, Don Chairez, maintained that the boy wanted marijuana or money in return.
Nevada state law says a child under 16 can't consent to sex.
The jury heard from several witnesses that Alotaibi smoked marijuana before and after encountering the California boy in a hotel hallway.
Alotaibi was found guilty of kidnapping for luring the boy to the hotel room, sexual assault for acts with the boy in a bathroom, and lewdness with a child for fondling and kissing the boy on the way to the room. The jury also found Alotaibi guilty of misdemeanor coercion.
