State Appeals Court upholds rape convictions against PACE founder David Fried Oppenheim

NORTHAMPTON — The Massachusetts Appeals Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld the child rape convictions against David Fried Oppenheim of Easthampton, who is now serving five to seven years in state prison.



Fried Oppenheim, 41, was the founder and former executive director of the former Easthampton performing arts center known as PACE. He was convicted of five counts of child rape by a Hampshire Superior Court jury in February 2012. The victim, a former theater student and intern at PACE, was 14 when the rapes began.



Fried Oppenheim appealed his case on multiple grounds, including the claim that Judge Mary-Lou Rup should have instructed jurors that they could consider a confession contained in an instant message conversation only if they believed prosecutors had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Fried Oppenheim wrote that confession.



COMMONWEALTH vs. DAVID OPPENHEIM







The appeals court concluded that Rup correctly instructed the jury on the standard of proof necessary for them to consider the confession.



“She properly instructed the jury that ‘the evidence must convince you that it’s more likely true than not’ that the defendant authored the (instant messages) attributed to him,” Associate Justice Mitchell J. Sikora wrote in the opinion. “We are satisfied that, after receipt of the contemporaneous and final instructions, the jury understood the duty to find it ‘more likely true than not’ that the defendant authored the (instant message) confession before they could consider it.”



In the message, Fried Oppenheim recounted in detail the first time he had sex with the victim.



Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan praised the court’s ruling, saying that justice was served. Appellate Unit Chief Assistant District Attorney Thomas H. Townsend represented the Northwestern district attorney in the appeal while attorney David J. Nathanson, a public defense lawyer, represented Oppenheim. The appeals court heard oral arguments on May 9.



“The defendant violated the trust of his innocent young victim and the community,” Sullivan said in a statement after the ruling was issued. “We are pleased that justice was served and his convictions were affirmed by the court.”



Nathanson could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.



The victim, beginning when she was 14, was an aspiring actress whom Fried Oppenheim mentored. He repeatedly raped her between October 2005 and June 2007 while he was the theater’s executive director. He had initiated physical and sexual contact with the girl through a self-devised acting technique he described as “primitives,” and told her not to tell anybody about their lessons because “society doesn’t understand what I’m doing here.”



PACE was dissolved in the spring of 2012.



In another matter, the appeals court affirmed that Rup did not systematically excuse college students from the jury, which Fried Oppenheim’s appeal had contended.



His appeal claimed that Rup “systematically excused students and as a result created substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice because college-age jurors more likely would understand the susceptibility of instant messaging to falsification,” according to the court’s decision.



Rup correctly informed prospective jurors that full-time student status was an available, but not automatic, ground of hardship and excusal, the appeals court found. In all, 19 students were ultimately excused and one student served as a juror.



“Of the 19 excusals, 15 students brought their hardship status to the judge’s attention by raising their juror identification cards. The judge’s respect for their requests was reasonable,” according to the appeals court.



Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.









