A police officer accused of standing lookout while his partner raped a drunk woman in her apartment says she asked them to check on her throughout the night.
Officer Franklin Mata testified in the trial Friday.
"She asked if we could check up on her through the night," he said.
Mata also said he and Officer Kenneth Moreno, who is accused of raping the intoxicated woman, did not believe she needed an ambulance.
The woman, now 29, and the officers met in December 2008 after a taxi driver called police saying she was too drunk to get out of his cab after a night out with friends.
While her memory of that night is spotty, the woman told jurors last month that she acutely recalls awakening to being raped and was certain the officers were responsible.
She didn't initially know who they were, but after contacting prosecutors, she confronted Moreno in a secretly taped conversation in which he alternately denied having sex with her and seemed to admit it, twice saying he'd used a condom. His lawyer has said the seemingly incriminating statements were just efforts to appease her.
Moreno's lawyer says the woman misremembers what happened and she and the officer had "physical contact" but not sex as he tried to counsel her while fending off drunken flirtations.
Mata's lawyer says his client, who is accused of acting as a lookout, did nothing criminal and there was no rape.
Surveillance video shows the officers went back to the woman's building three times within four hours after initially ushering her inside, while they told dispatchers they were elsewhere. Defense lawyers have said the woman asked them to check on her during the night.
Mata and Moreno have been suspended until a New York Police Department review after their trial. If convicted of rape, the officers each could face up to 25 years in prison.
