EVANSTON — The manager of the Super 8 motel in Evanston has been acquitted of three counts of sexual assault in the first degree. Prakash Pithiya, 25, whose family owns the establishment, was accused by a now-former employee who claimed the incident took place in Pithiya’s private living quarters at the motel after an evening of heavy drinking by both parties during the night shift beginning late Dec. 22, culminating with a sexual encounter in the early morning hours of Dec. 23.

Pithiya was initially facing 15-150 years in prison and/or $30,000 in fines. The four-day jury trial, which took place Sept. 17 through Sept. 20, was presided over by Judge James Kaste.

While both the defendant’s and the accuser’s accounts shared similar timelines and facts, a lack of DNA evidence and several, seemingly small inconsistencies turned the trial into a case of he said/she said with the jury reaching the verdict based on the establishment of reasonable doubt.

Pithiya, a native Californian who relocated to Evanston in March 2023 to oversee management of the property, said his drinking had ramped up in the months leading up to the incident due to having “no friends or family” and staying to himself.

“My drinking gradually got worse,” he said.

He admitted he had already been drinking vodka casually throughout the day and that he was well on his way to intoxication by the time the employee arrived at work.

The alleged victim brought another male party, who was not a motel employee or previously known to Pithiya, to work with her. The two men began drinking together. The woman, who reported that she had been sober for two months before the incident but admitted to having a problematic prior history with alcohol, eventually began drinking as the evening progressed, including going on two separate alcohol runs to the liquor store for more.

Both attorneys, Uinta County Attorney Loretta Howieson Kallas and defense attorney Joe Hampton, established timelines using a variety of security camera footage, along with phone call and text logs. The circumstantial evidence portrayed an evening that vacillated between disagreements and aggression and platonic affection, including hugging and pinky promises between manager and his employee. 

Pithiya testified that he had been, at times, verbally abusive toward his accuser and her friend, the latter of whom allegedly physically assaulting Pithiya inside the manager’s living quarters. This incident would later be argued as the cause of a broken bedroom door as the alleged victim testified that the damage occurred during that altercation, while Pithiya said the employee and her friend later broke the door down to assault him after consensual sex had taken place just before 6 a.m. 

Immediately after the sexual contact, the alleged victim called the friend, who had remained close by in a vehicle in the motel’s parking lot, to pick her up. The two of them returned to the front desk so she could complete her timecard and tend to other office business for over an hour before she insisted on going to the hospital for a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) exam. 

The woman required multiple services, including an X-ray for a hand injury that she reported after she punched a wall after the incident and a CT-scan for a possible head injury when she reported to the nurse that she hit her head “pretty hard on the bed,” or that she was shoved into something or possibly hit in the back of her head during the incident, a claim that she would later drop during further investigation.

A genital exam did not indicate injury, trauma or lacerations. Kallas asserted that a “lack of laceration doesn’t indicate a lack of assault.” Hampton continued to highlight seemingly small but notable discrepancies between the doctor’s and the nurse’s reports, as well as several differing details between the reports of the first responding police officer and the subsequent investigative report by the detective.

The accuser’s documented history and treatment for mental health diagnoses took center stage during the trial. She testified that she tends to block things out due to lifelong history of trauma. Kallas stated that the alleged victim’s responses during and after the assault were indicative of standard trauma responses.

Hampton argued the possibility that consensual sex could have occurred during a dissociative state due to the mixing of alcohol with the psychotropic medications she was prescribed.

The prosecution presented two state crime lab experts to attest to the biological evidence findings. Seminal fluid was detected on rape kit swabs but was “not consistent with a single source profile” obtained from Pithiya. Another swab sample indicated that “no conclusion [could be made] due to the complexity of the mixture.”

Kallas later reminded the jury that “there’s no requirement that there is semen involved.”

Hampton repeatedly questioned the Evanston Police Department’s (EPD) investigation, particularly its decision not to have clothing and bedding tested for DNA. Detective Cody Webb testified that he remembered speaking to the crime lab and concluded that testing of “the clothes would be put on pause.”

Webb stated that he deferred to the analysts’ expert recommendation not to test the items as both the accuser and the defendant agreed to her presence in the bed, thus her DNA would inarguably be present.

Hampton continued his assertion that the investigation by EPD was insufficient. He questioned why other present parties, such as employees who were at the motel earlier in the evening and Pithiya’s then-girlfriend, who was not present but was frequently on the phone with all involved parties throughout the evening and who ended up testifying in his defense, were not interviewed. Webb only confirmed that they were not.

Webb also testified he did not look into the possibility of locating and questioning witnesses in occupied motel rooms adjacent to Pithiya’s bedroom, but that he’d reviewed 84 hours of security footage during a 12-hour time frame “to show the progression of the night.”

The woman’s third-party male friend, who was present throughout the majority of the events and subsequently took her to the hospital, was unable to be subpoenaed for testimony. Webb agreed that the alleged victim had not been helpful in locating that witness, but had otherwise been of assistance as she provided her medical records and came in for questioning when asked to.

Webb also agreed that perhaps she had been less than truthful about minor details, but testified that her “account remained fairly consistent.”

Pithiya was arrested about 10 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 23. When he was booked into Uinta County Jail half an hour later, his blood alcohol content (BAC) registered at .273, more than three times the legal limit. Hampton questioned why the accuser’s BAC wasn’t obtained or recorded. Webb seemingly confirmed the woman’s suspected inebriated state by responding that they didn’t conduct a formal, more in-depth interviews with her “because of the intoxication factor. We don’t interview intoxicated subjects.”

“There was some discrepancy in her statements,” Hampton told the jury.  “There were no signs of trauma in relation to the SANE exam ... CT [scan], no DNA that would directly link Mr. Pithiya to this conduct. It was consensual sex.”

There were also notable discrepancies between the initial hospital and law enforcement reports and the notarized statement from the alleged victim four days after the incident, Hampton contended.

Hampton also introduced a possible financial motive for accusing Pithiya of assault. Using a portion of video featuring the woman smiling on camera post-incident after returning to the front office, Hampton questioned the accuser about her demeanor in the clip. She affirmed that she was smiling but said, “I tend to smile when in an uncomfortable situation.”

Hampton further informed the court that in addition to the sex assault claim, she had filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Complaint (EEOC) civil suit in the summer of 2024, approximately half a year after the rape accusation, though she denied that the sex assault complaint was filed to facilitate the EEOC complaint. 

There were moments throughout the night when the woman obtained and controlled Pithiya’s phone, and spoke frequently to his girlfriend, including calling her on her way to the hospital to tell her she was going to get a rape exam.

Pithiya took the stand in his own defense and, despite having to rely heavily on surveillance footage to jog his memory of events, his story never wavered.

He admitted to imbibing up to “about a pint [of vodka] a day.” He also confessed to having been verbally abusive several times during the evening.

“I was being vulgar,” he testified, adding that he was angered by his accuser’s marijuana use because it made his office smell unprofessional.

“You’re not here to be high on the job,” he said during Kallas’ cross examination but admitted to drinking with his accuser and eventually having sex with her. When the woman’s friend had hit him across the face during the course of the night, he informed his then-girlfriend that things were “tense,” and that he was beginning to feel unsafe.

Hampton called Wasatch Forensic Consulting psychiatrist Dr. David Burrow to testify as a mental health expert. Burrow had never met nor reviewed nor validated the alleged victim’s mental health records, but he explained common symptoms of her multiple diagnoses and the effects her medications could have on memory, particularly when paired with alcohol consumption. He testified that stress-related events could cause dissociative episodes, and that “it would be possible” to appear to be consenting to sexual activity while actively dissociating.

He also said that one of the woman’s medications, in particular, increased the risk of alcohol-related blackouts.

During closing arguments, Kallas again highlighted the accuser’s mental health diagnoses and the fact that she was forthright with law enforcement about her marijuana use and driving while under the influence earlier in the evening to procure more alcohol.

“She is running away,” Kallas stressed, while showing surveillance footage of the moments just after the alleged assault.

“Self-induced intoxication is not a defense to the crime of sexual assault in the first degree,” Kallas told the jury before resting her case.

“There is reasonable doubt ... Accused of a most heinous crime, consider the following evidence,” Hampton said while reiterating several inconsistencies in the employee’s account. He re-introduced a possible financial motive due to the admitted hardships she was facing, citing the ongoing civil suit against Pithiya. Hampton further cited “ample evidence of ... gaps in memory and recollection due to mental health conditions.” 

Defending his use of Burrow’s expertise without having access to the woman’s mental health history, Hampton said, “That’s the point — no one did,” referring to law enforcement’s “lack of investigation ... this leaves it as an open question.”

“He [Hampton] implied ‘she doesn’t know her own experience,’” Kallas stated during her rebuttal. “There’s no need to speculate on her mental health condition.”

After a 3.5-hour deliberation, the jury found Pithiya not guilty of two of the three charges; the third charge was dismissed mid-way through the trial.

Pithiya immediately hugged Hampton and later told the Herald through his attorney that “his prayers have been answered and he’s glad this is over.”