Photo: Officers Kenneth Moreno (left) and Franklin Mata were cleared of rape charges.A Manhattan jury cleared two cops of raping an East Village woman Thursday but convicted them of three minor official misconduct charges.
Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata had faced up to 25 years in prison if they had been convicted of the most serious charge against them.
The verdict came after seven days of deliberations - and after a six-week trial in which prosecutor Coleen Balbert said Moreno sexually assaulted the woman while Mata stood watch.
Both officers looked stunned when the verdict was announced and their families began weeping tears of joy.
Moreno and Mata were also found not guilty of three counts of second-degree burglary for taking the woman's keys and returning to her apartment three times.
Both cops were found guilty of official misconduct - misdemeanor charges that could send them to jail for a year when they are sentenced June 28 - for going back to her apartment without telling their superiors.
In her closing statement, Balbert branded Moreno and Mata liars who "disgraced their profession" by taking advantage of a woman who was drunk and vomiting when they first encountered her in December 2008.
"These two were supposed to be New York City's Finest, but on Dec. 7, 2008, they were New York City's worst," she fumed.
Balbert told the jury Moreno's claims that the almost completely naked woman tried to seduce him - and that he just spooned with her - were a lie. She was especially galled by Moreno's cringe-worthy insistence that he doesn't "kiss and tell."
Defense lawyers Joseph Tacopina and Edward Mandery called the now 29-year-old accuser as a gold digger who is suing for $57 million.
They said the fashion executive was too bombed to remember what really happened - and that there is no DNA backing her claim that she "woke up to being penetrated from behind."