Note: this analysis is a companion to today’s earlier article, “Jury Finds Ex-Flagler Paramedic Melady Guilty of Rape of Unconscious Woman in Ambulance.”
Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols seemed to take longer than typical as she went over the two-page verdict form today at the end of James Melady’s three-day trial on rape and voyeurism charges, and five hours of deliberations by the jury. Maybe Nichols wanted to make sure she was reading right. Maybe she couldn’t make sense of the verdict. Nor would ordinary observers of the trial.
It was a split verdict, and an inexplicable, technically—if not legally—nonsensical verdict, and demonstrably so.
The jury found Melady, the former Flagler County Fire Rescue paramedic, guilty of sexual battery, or rape, a lesser charge than the one he faced: rape of an incapacitated person. Melady had filmed the rape. The jury acquitted on the voyeurism charge.
The difference between rape of an incapacitated person and “just” rape is in the felony level. Raping an incapacitated person is like forcible rape. It’s a first-degree felony with a penalty of up to 30 years in prison. Rape of a person who is not incapacitated is a second-degree felony, with a maximum penalty of 15 years. It is equivalent to statutory rape.
The victim in this case, a 41-year-old woman, was entirely incapacitated from an alcohol overdose (her blood alcohol level would test at 0.537 and she would be in intensive care and hospitalized for a week), as she was being transported by ambulance from Flagler Beach to AdventHealth Palm Coast on State Road 100.
When it comes to establishing the incapacity of an individual, lawyers and juries rarely get to have as well-documented a case as they did in this trial. The incapacity was medically asserted by Melady himself in his report. It was documented in the video he took of her, ostensibly to protect himself from legal liability when he exposed her breasts and manipulated her vagina.
And the incapacity was central to the defense’s argument that Melady was doing his job when he was manipulating and penetrating the woman’s vagina with his fingers. Melady testified to the need to conduct the invasive pelvic exam, and his lawyer, Charles Fletcher, asserted that Melady was doing that exam to figure out why the woman was so profoundly passed out.
There was no question from the evidence, and no dispute between the defense and the prosecution, that the woman was not only incapacitated, but concerningly, dangerously so. That’s why she was in the ambulance.
Yet the jury found that she was not incapacitated.
Juries are free to convict on what’s called “lesser-included charges” if they don’t want to convict on the top charge. “They’re kind of like building blocks to the main count,” as Assistant State Attorney Melissa Clark, who prosecuted the case, explained it. The lawyers and the judge agree to the lesser-included ahead of time.
There were three lesser charges in this case, plus acquittal. One of them was attempted sexual battery, or rape, on a helpless woman: Melady would have had to try to rape the woman, but would have been found to not actually be able to do so. In the video, he is seen—thanks to his own camera work, which ensured a full, clear, close-up view of his assault—spreading the woman’s labia and introducing his fingers.
Another lesser charge was “sexual battery,” the charge the jury chose.
When Clark explained the charge to the jury, she did so cursorily, never thinking it would be a contender. She did not think that the incapacity of the woman was a point of contention; rather, she believed it had been established beyond doubt, possibly more convincingly than any other allegation in this trial.
“You’re going to notice that the same elements of sexual battery exist here, that he committed an act where he penetrated her vagina without her consent,” she had told the jury in her closing argument. “The primary difference here is, if I didn’t prove that she was helpless. And clearly she was. There should be no doubt in [your] mind, she is completely unconscious, incapable of consent.”
The jury, somehow, did not agree.
The third lesser-included charge was attempted sexual battery without the involvement of an incapacitated person, and the fourth was simple battery, a misdemeanor involving no sexual elements.
“The judge is also going to instruct you that if you return a verdict of guilty, it should be the highest offense that you believe the state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” Clark told the jury. “I would argue, we have proven the sexual battery under specified circumstances, and we have proven the video voyeurism.”
On two occasions the jury interrupted its deliberations with requests from the court. First, jurors wanted to watch the incriminating video clips again. Then, the jury submitted a long letter asking questions about the origin of the videos. The questions were irrelevant to the voyeurism charge: was Melady within his rights to take video of a patient while conducting an invasive pelvic exam, without her consent? The jury asked what device he used to take the video, where the video was stored, and what device his girlfriend used to copy the video and from where. It was Melady’s girlfriend’s copy of the video that eventually ended up with law enforcement, opening the case in 2024. The woman was raped in 2021.
The court did not answer the jury’s questions, instructing it to stick to the evidence it heard at trial.
Melady was acquitted of the voyeurism charge. The jury may have been convinced by the defense’s argument that Melady took the video to protect himself from liability. But the jury could only reach that conclusion if it also believed that Melady had conducted a legitimate medical exam—that he was doing his job, and therefore needed legal cover.
Obviously, that’s not what it concluded by finding him guilty of rape.
No one knows what the jury argued over for five hours unless a juror volunteers the information. None were interviewed afterward, leaving their verdict open to speculation. The acquittal and the lesser charge may have been the result of a compromise to avoid a hung jury. If so, the result was more of an accommodation than a “just and true verdict,” as jurors attest to when they’re polled at the end, and as such, it did not reflect evidence that was beyond doubt.
Melady is to be sentenced in January or February. The state will likely be seeking the full 15 years, and will not be bound by the strictest rules of evidence that prevail at trial. It will be allowed to introduce other details about Melady’s background and note his pending charges in other cases, including a video voyeurism charge in Volusia County. It will also seek to designate him a sexual offender for life.
In a plea deal before the trial, the state had offered Melady 20 years in prison and 10 on probation. He may yet face that many years or more in prison. He faces trial for fraud in Volusia County, as well as for burglary and voyeurism there, with combined exposure to an additional 40 years in prison.
Joe D says
Just an absolutely unbelievable VERDICT. As a male RN Master’s prepared Clinical Nurse Specialist , a Certified Nurse Case Manager and former Nursing Division Chief, I am APPALLED that the jury looked at, and listened to the poor excuse for a defense, and only convicted him on the lesser charges!
Dropping the voyeurism charge indicates either they didn’t understand what the term meant, or the jury …with 5 (?) women members…didn’t think filming the totally unnecessary vaginal exam ( as testified by several medical experts) with his PERSONAL PHONE CAMERA and storing it on an unsecured personal device without the patient’s consent ( even after they regained consciousness), was improper or illegal!!! I can assure you with my 43 years of Nursing experience, it most certainly is!
Maybe the jury either “blamed the victim” for passing out drunk to the level, she PROBABLY required short term dialysis in the ICU (?) to lower the DEADLY levels of alcohol in her blood…or they just felt SORRY for the former ENT, and agreed to the lower charges so to not have him spend up to 30 years in jail! Or alternatively the jury didn’t feel the defendant inserting his fingers into the victim’s vaginal cavity as actually RAPE?!? OMG!
Well…the letter of the law was followed, he was tried by a jury of his “PEERS,” and they came to an agreed verdict ( no hung jury). But…I Personally don’t feel that JUSTICE was done in this case, and it is a SLAP IN THE FACE of every professional medical personnel, that this individual may put doubt in the minds of future CONSCIENCE PATIENTS, deciding if they want to be transported via ambulance…despite the new regulations ($$$), which now require an additional emergency personnel in the back of the ambulance and a medical camera recording device installed in the ambulance ($$$), much like police body cameras, to provide a video record of treatment and behavior in the ambulance.
Too bad we can’t send the bill for THAT to the defendant, instead of paid by taxpayers!
Interesting says
Thirty years is a long time. It is true she was not raped by having actual intercourse. People get less sometimes for manslaughter.
I think they did not want to see this young person go to jail that long. His life has been ruined. He will certainly be paying a price. I think justice was served.