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The defense lawyer for a combat veteran convicted of sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman has filed a motion for a new trial — arguing the prosecutor didn’t act early enough in disclosing a recorded jail phone call of the veteran describing a sex fantasy. The Mail Tribune filed a public records request and obtained a recording of the phone call. When making phone calls, inmates are warned by an automated message that their calls are recorded and monitored. In the November 2015 phone call from the Jackson County Jail, Sean Myers, now 49, of Talent was talking to his then-girlfriend, according to the motion for a new trial. He described a sexual fantasy he wrote and illustrated for the woman, the recording shows. In Myers' fantasy, a man gets a woman “half-drunk” on “really good wine” at his house. The man shackles and chains her to a bench in his basement, then chokes her unconscious, Myers says in the recording. When the woman regains consciousness, she finds an act of bestiality is being performed upon her, Myers says in the recording. In March of this year, a jury convicted Myers of first-degree sodomy, first-degree sexual abuse, three counts of first-degree burglary and invasion of personal privacy for his actions March 10, 2015. Jackson County Deputy District Attorney David Orr argued Myers gave wine laced with Ambien, a sedative sleep aid, to his estranged partner, then sodomized her and photographed her genitals with a cellphone while she was incapacitated. The victim in the case was not the same woman Myers talked to during the jail phone call. The victim woke up the next day feeling ill and sought medical treatment. Myers’ semen was found using rectal swabs during a forensic exam, according to testimony and evidence presented at trial. Photographs of the woman’s genitals were discovered on cellphones. Myers has admitted to photographing the woman, but denied drugging or sodomizing her. The recorded jail phone call of Myers’ sexual fantasy was not played in court during his trial. Orr said the call’s value in proving Myers’ guilt wasn’t enough to outweigh the likelihood it would prejudice jurors against Myers. But Orr did mention the existence of the phone call during a sentencing hearing earlier this month before Jackson County Circuit Judge Lisa Greif, who presided over the trial and decided Myers’ prison sentence. Orr said he did not want to play the call in open court. He offered not to play it if defense lawyer Howard Grooters withdrew a psychologist’s written psychosexual evaluation that said, “It is important to note that Mr. Myers does not have a known history of engaging in aberrant or illegal sexual behaviors.” The evaluation cited a 2005 study that said sexual recidivism is associated with deviant sexual interests, antisocial attitudes and lifestyle instability. “The probability of his reoffending remains extremely low, close to zero,” the psychologist hired for the defense wrote. Orr later explained to the Mail Tribune he had a duty to rebut false evidence presented in the psychosexual evaluation that Myers had no aberrant sexual interests, especially since the defense was arguing Myers should not be sent to prison. Orr said he had to address the issue for the sake of public safety. Orr said he had checked with Jackson County District Attorney Beth Heckert about the jail recording and she agreed it needed to be brought to light. Orr ultimately did not play the jail call recording during the contentious sentencing hearing and Myers and his defense attorney agreed to move forward with sentencing that day. The judge sentenced Myers to eight years and three months in prison. In his motion for a new trial, Grooters said the timing of Orr’s disclosure about the existence of the recorded call violates rules about the sharing of evidence between prosecutors and defense lawyers. Grooters said Orr sent an email disclosing an audio file of the jail recording at 4:51 p.m. the day before the sentencing hearing. By bringing up the recording, Orr was leveraging previously undisclosed material against the defendant, Grooters said in his motion. In an interview with the Mail Tribune, Grooters said Orr should have notified him about the recording weeks before the sentencing so the psychologist could talk to Myers about the phone call and adjust his psychosexual evaluation. “The timing of the disclosure was done in a way to essentially impede the ability to argue a mitigating factor at sentencing,” Grooters said. Grooters said he gave Orr a copy of the psychosexual evaluation about seven weeks before the sentencing, but Orr did not provide the recorded jail phone call until the evening before the sentencing. Orr said he received the seven-page evaluation weeks ago when it was marked as a working draft. He said he didn’t receive 100 pages of reports by three defense experts until a day or two before the sentencing hearing. Judge Greif criticized the defense lawyer for only giving her a working day to review the 100 pages of reports. A court stamp shows the reports were entered as documents on a Sunday night before a Tuesday sentencing hearing. The psychosexual evaluation was still seven pages long and marked as a working draft “not to be released in this form.” The three reports argued Myers should be given a reduced sentence for a variety of reasons — including that Myers’ horrific combat experiences in Afghanistan had damaged his moral reasoning and his lack of deviant sexual interests gave him a low risk of reoffending. Orr said the situation shows how nonscientific and unreliable reports can be — especially when they’re paid for by the defense. He said the psychologist failed to uncover Myers’ aberrant sexual interests. “It’s pretty clear the psychologist was not able to make good determinations about whether a person is safe to live in society,” Orr said. Orr said it doesn’t make sense for the defense lawyer to complain he didn’t know about or get a copy of the jail phone call soon enough considering that it was his client who made the phone call. “The whole time Mr. Myers knew the recording existed,” Orr said. “He knew he had created that recording. So to say now it’s evidence that was withheld? He knew about his own aberrant sexual interests. It’s a real head-scratcher to see how he’s the one on the complaining side of this.” Orr said the defense lawyer could also have asked for a delay in the sentencing so he could have more time to deal with the jail recording. In his motion for a new trial, Grooters made a variety of other arguments, including that Myers’ cellphone was seized without a search warrant, the judge didn’t give clear instructions in response to a jury question and forensic evidence wasn’t properly collected or processed. Myers detailed many of the same issues in handwritten motions for new trials he previously wrote and filed from jail. He also argued that the woman he was convicted of sodomizing has a past history of falsely accusing a man of abuse. Myers wrote she is an immigrant who went to an urgent care clinic to initiate a spousal abuse claim so she could have her marriage to a United States citizen annulled but still live in America. Myers argued she sought medical care that led to him being charged with sex crimes because he knew about her immigration fraud. Orr said the woman only sought medical care because she felt ill, suspected she had been drugged and didn’t know what had happened to her during the night. She testified medical providers suggested she undergo the sexual assault exam that revealed Myers’ semen and other evidence. “I don’t have any doubt that she was telling the truth,” Orr said. A hearing on the motions for a new trial is scheduled for Aug. 23 in Jackson County Circuit Court. Although he has been sentenced to an Oregon prison, Myers is still in the local jail. He was indicted this month on a new first-degree sexual abuse charge for allegedly touching the breast of a girl younger than 14 in 2015. Myers has entered a not guilty plea in that case and has a pretrial conference hearing scheduled Monday, court records show. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.