Rick’s virility is buttressed by his equally gentle, humorous and sensitive demeanor.
—Motown Records Press Release, 1980s.
Attempting to curry favor with the jury during his trial, Rick had testified that if acquitted, he would make a new album and launch a concert tour that would have an antidrug theme. On September 17, 1993, the day the verdict was announced, he came to court carrying Tazman in his arms. He wasn’t acquitted, but the result was much better than many of his supporters expected.
Although the horrendous and detailed allegations that Rick had tortured Alley were the emotional basis of the entire trial and underlay most of the four days of jury deliberation, he was acquitted of all torture charges, but just barely. Eleven jurors voted him guilty of torture, but the one no vote was enough to prevent his conviction on those charges.
That was a major break for Rick, because the torture charges had carried a potential life sentence. Due to the jury deadlock, he also was declared innocent of aggravated mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon, making terrorist threats, and forced oral copulation. After the verdict, a juror told reporters it was difficult to determine the credibility of witnesses because every witness had been high when the alleged crimes occurred.
Rick had been found not guilty of the most publicized and the most shocking allegation against him, that he had tied a naked young woman, Alley, to a chair and used a hot cocaine pipe and a heated knife to burn and torture her.
He was convicted, however, of supplying Alley with cocaine. In the rock ’n’ roll culture, in Hollywood in general at that time, and among many other American subcultures, the idea that Rick or anyone else could be put through a lengthy and expensive trial, and actually convicted, for giving cocaine to another confessed cocaine user older than eighteen was laughable. If Rick had been found guilty only of this offense, the fact that the charges had been leveled against him in the first place would have been the shocking part of this story, and in all probability, his resulting jail term would have been a short one.
Unfortunately for Rick, however, he was also convicted of assaulting and imprisoning Sauger. His repetition of a crime similar to his alleged assault and imprisonment of Alley had done him in: attacking Sauger had put him in the way of a fairly long jail sentence. As a result of his conviction on three charges, Rick faced up to eight years and eight months in prison.
There was more bad news: In December 1994, adding monetary pain to Rick’s upcoming imprisonment, Sauger was awarded more than $2 million in damages, including more than $200,000 in lost future earnings. She told the jury in her civil suit that she had been unable to work since the incident occurred in 1992, due in part to what she said were recurring headaches and long-term constant throbbing in one eye.