A Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend are once again charged with drugging a woman, after an Orange County Superior Court judge on Thursday allowed prosecutors to refile criminal charges in the high-profile case that he had recently thrown out.
The ruling by Judge Michael Leversen means Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley are both once again charged with poisoning a woman and furnishing her with PCP, while Riley is also charged with providing her with cocaine. An additional half-dozen charges against Robicheaux — related to various drugs and allegedly illegal weapons found by police during a search of his home — remain.
After a series of legal setbacks — including the same judge earlier this year throwing out far more serious sexual assault-related charges that first drew international headlines to the case — Thursday’s ruling was a courtroom victory for prosecutors. But the defense team during a hearing at the Fullerton courthouse indicated they will soon be asking for the entirety of the remaining charges to be dismissed.
After years of heated courtroom debate over whether Robicheaux and Riley were “swingers” who had consensual sex with women or predators who befriended women at Newport Beach night spots before drugging and raping them, the decision to toss the sexual assault charges has essentially turned it into a drug and guns case involving a single alleged victim rather than the 13 initial accusers. It is currently being prosecuted by the California Attorney General’s Office, after a judge several years ago removed the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the case.
The three reinstated criminal charges revolve around allegations by a woman who met Robicheaux on a dating app while visiting Orange County on Easter weekend in 2017. The woman told police that Riley also turned up at what she had thought was going to be a date with Robicheaux at Nobu Newport Beach, and alleged that Riley convinced her to take cocaine. The…
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