Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 23, 1993 TAG: 9311230250
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Short
Six other charges against Ornes - five counts of attempting to rape the girl and one charge of attempted malicious wounding of a woman - were not prosecuted.
Ornes had been scheduled to be tried by a jury Dec. 1.
A pretrial motion hearing had been scheduled Monday, but instead, Ornes entered what is known as an Alford plea.
Under a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Alford vs. North Carolina, defendants are allowed to plead guilty when they believe they are innocent but acknowledge that prosecutors have evidence that would likely lead a jury to convict them.
An Alford plea puts Ornes' punishment in the hands of a judge rather than giving a jury the chance to set a possibly harsher penalty.
Ornes, 42, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 3. He remains in the Pulaski County Jail.
Pulaski police arrested Ornes in October 1992 and charged him with one count of attempted rape of the girl and with attempting to wound a woman with a butcher knife.
In February, a Pulaski grand jury returned indictments on those charges as well as the six additional charges.
All of the incidents were alleged to have happened Oct. 4, 1992, in Pulaski.
Ornes knew the girl and the woman.
Ornes, a New York City native and former Marine, previously was employed with the Goldsboro, N.C., police and the Radford Sheriff's Office.
Ornes was hired by Christiansburg in 1990. He was suspended from his job after his arrest and resigned last December.
Memo: (Ran on C-3 in Metro edition)