Jurors acquitted a wealthy Manhattan lawyer of trying to rape a woman on a fold-out Murphy bed in his posh Midtown office — but they took plenty of pot shots at him as they left the courthouse.
“He’s absolutely a douche,” a female juror said of Dan Nelson, as her fellow panelists nodded their heads affirmatively. “He’s not a nice guy, that’s the first thing we agreed on.”
The jurors did find Nelson, 39, guilty of the lesser charges of sexual abuse and obstruction of breathing for the bizarre August 21, 2014 encounter.
Nelson, who downed three bottles of wine before he met his accuser, told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court that he wasn’t ‘up’ to raping her because he’s impotent and hadn’t taken his Viagra pill.
“I don’t believe he suffers from erectile dysfunction as a medical condition but because he’s a lush,” said a female juror.
The chatty jurors were not fans of Nelson’s flamboyant style either.
“His suit looked like a cut up piece of luggage,” a young male juror exclaimed of the retro plaid ensemble paired with a ruffled pocket square.
“Yeah, he looked like a clown,” another piped in.
Nelson met his accuser at Bull McCabe’s after midnight and he took her back to the conference room of his East 56th Street firm, Nelson & McCulloch, where he specializes in intellectual property law.
They made out and took off their clothes. But the woman changed her mind about the one-night stand.
‘He was a jerk that night. But being a jerk isn’t a crime.’
- Defense lawyer Timothy Parlatore
She accused Nelson of pinning her down on the designer Italian-made bed, choking her as she told him to stop and tearing off her dress as she fled naked into the street.
“When you are trying to drag a naked woman from an elevator, you are clearly not inviting her back to have tea,” argued ADA Maxine Rosenthal.
Nelson, who was so soused he could barely walk straight, claimed he’d only choked during rough foreplay. And the real problem arose when he had difficulty maintaining his manhood.
“You don’t seem to be enjoying this very much?’” she said, which threw him into a rage, he testified. “I got upset. I thought she was taunting me because I couldn’t get an erection.”
He then violently tossed her from his office, tearing off her dress and wig in the scuffle, he said.
Defense lawyer Timothy Parlatore argued that Nelson wasn’t the nicest guy but that didn’t make him guilty.
“He was a jerk that night,” the attorney said. “But being a jerk isn’t a crime.”
Nelson faces up to 7 years in prison on the sexual abuse charge.
As Nelson left court, wearing sunglasses, he declined to comment. His lawyer said, “We are happy that the jury acquitted him of the top count and feel confident that the lesser counts will be overturned.”