RANCHO CUCAMONGA – A former Westminster detective faces the prospect of life in prison after a jury Tuesday declared him legally sane when he abducted and brutally raped a cocktail waitress outside a self-storage lot in Fontana.

In a novel and controversial defense, Anthony Nicholas Orban, 32, testified that he has no recollection of the April 2010 attack because a powerful dose of his antidepressant medication, Zoloft, caused a blackout. Orban, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

The panel of eight women and four men returned with the verdict in the sanity phase of the trial — sane on all eight felony counts — at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday after about nine hours of deliberations that began Friday at West Valley Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga. They left the courtroom through a back exit.

At 10:50 a.m. Tuesday, jurors informed San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Shahla S. Sabet that they had reached a verdict. The same panel on June 13 found Orban guilty of abducting the young mother from Ontario Mills Mall and then sexually assaulting her in her SUV outside the Fontana business in broad daylight on April 3, 2010.

When Monday’s verdict was read, Orban, dressed in a dark suit, shook his head.

Jane Doe, who was 25 at the time of the attack and present for the verdict, told the Orange County Register through the prosecutor, San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Debbie Ploghaus, that she was excited by the ruling.

Orban’s wife, Tracy, also was present for the verdict. She sobbed when the verdicts were read.

Monday afternoon after their lunch break, jurors requested that the entire testimony of victim Jane Doe — 113 typed pages — be read back to them. They went home and spent less then two hours deliberating Tuesday morning before reaching a decision.

Orban’s Los Angeles-based criminal attorney, James Blatt, never disputed that Orban committed the crimes. But in a controversial defense, he argued that Zoloft rendered Orban “unconscious” and that Orban therefore was not responsible for his actions.

Blatt was not immediately available for comment after the verdict.

Ploghaus told the Register after the hearing: “I’m very pleased with the verdict and very grateful to the jurors. This was an unusual case. There was a lot of medical testimony and the jurors paid attention to all of it. They paid attention to all the testimony.”

Orban testified last week that Zoloft, which he began taking about four months before the rape, at times created in him violent thoughts, including fantasies of killing his Irvine-based wife and dog. He testified that he was depressed in the days leading up to the rape and that his marriage was on the rocks.

Orban was taking 150 milligrams of Zoloft per day, according to Ploghaus. According to medical literature, that daily dosage is on the middle to higher level of prescribed amounts.

Blatt tried to convince jurors that on the day of the attack, Orban was “more likely than not” unable to tell the difference between right and wrong — the legal definition of sanity.

If the panel had agreed with the “Zoloft defense” mounted by Orban’s attorney, James Blatt, the previous convictions would have disappeared, Orban would have been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and then the former detective would have been evaluated by mental health experts to face anything from outpatient treatment to confinement in a state hospital.

Now, at his scheduled sentencing on Aug. 9, Orban can be locked up for life by Sabet for eight felony convictions that include kidnapping, rape, oral copulation and sexual penetration with a foreign object.

According to testimony, Orban took Zoloft for three months beginning in December 2009. On March 1, 2010, he stopped taking the medication but resumed his one-pill-per-day dosage on March 29 — five days before the rape.

During the trial, Ploghaus elicited several details from Orban about what he did the morning of the attack, including going to the gym and driving to the home of his companion that day, Jeff Jelinek, a former prison guard in Chino and Ontario resident.

Orban and Jelinek, friends since high school, carried out the crime after a day of heavy drinking when both were armed and off duty. Orban groped another woman and a man before abducting and raping Jane Doe, according to testimony.

Orban testified that he ate fajitas and drank margaritas with Jelinek at Chili’s, but that his recollection of the day ended at Chili’s at around noon. The two shared eight margaritas and two pitchers of beer throughout the day, according to Ploghaus.

Orban testified that the next thing he recalled after allegedly blacking out at Chili’s was feeling the cool evening air on his face while he stood outside of a Denny’s near where Jane Doe had just been attacked.

During the guilt phase of the trial, Jane Doe testified that Orban forced himself into her car as she was leaving work at Dave & Buster’s at the Ontario Mills Mall shortly after 5:15 p.m. He pointed his service weapon at her and told her to drive, she testified.

After having Jane Doe drive to an industrial area in nearby Fontana, Orban then assaulted the woman in her unlocked SUV for more than an hour, at one point jamming his service weapon in her mouth and then rubbing the gun along her cheek, according to evidence presented at trial.

Calmly testifying in graphic detail about the rape, Jane Doe told jurors that Orban twice tried to choke her by sticking two of his fingers in her mouth, twice used his hands and tried to choke her around the neck, punched her twice in the stomach and once in the sternum and in the back, and hit her in the face twice with a closed fist.

She testified that she believed Orban was going to kill her after raping her, pointing his gun at her and saying, “I think we’ll continue this in the desert.”

Co-defendant Jelinek pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon, being an accessory after the fact and false imprisonment.

In a plea agreement, Jelinek, 33, testified against Orban and will serve five years and four months in state prison.

Jelinek was not physically present during the 72-minute assault in the victim’s car, but Orban texted him photos of the attack as it was occurring, according to evidence presented at trial.

One message accompanying an image said, “Look what I’m doing.”

After Doe escaped from the car, she fled to a liquor store, where she told the clerk to call police.

Orban grabbed the woman’s keys and called Jelinek to pick him up at a nearby gas station, according to the police report. But Orban left his service weapon and sunglasses in the woman’s car, the report says.

Orban’s name was written on the barrel of the gun and a bullet that dislodged from the chamber also was found in the woman’s car, according to the report.

The woman’s keys were found in Jelinek’s possession, according to the police report.

Orban and Jelinek were arrested after Orban’s wife called police to report his gun was missing and police interviewed Orban and Jelinek at Ontario Mills Mall.

During the interview, the victim was taken to the scene in a police car and identified the two as her assailants.

Jane Doe has a young son. Ploghaus said that Jane Doe, 27, is doing well.

Said the prosecutor: “She’s an inspiration to me because she’s really turned something horrific into a positive thing. She’s telling other girls her story now.”

Contact the writer: 714-704-3764 or ghardesty@ocregister.com