PROVIDENCE — A Washington County Superior Court jury found Eugene C. Texter III guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Narragansett girl as she walked to school four years ago. Thursday, his public defender argued in state Supreme Court that those jurors should not have been allowed to hear testimony about the victim’s identification of Texter as her attacker shortly after the assault.

In appealing Texter’s conviction, lawyer Janice Weisfeld claimed that the police had coached the teenager and strongly indicated through their actions that he was the attacker.

“I think there was no doubt that the process suggested that this was their man,” Weisfeld said.

The case stems from a September 2003 incident in which Texter showed the freshman pornography, sprayed her face with cleaning fluid and threatened to kill her as he groped her and dragged her from a path near the Narragansett High School. He freed her after a struggle and snapped her photo as she walked away.

Moments after the assault, officers stopped Texter, a twice-convicted rapist, as he rode his bicycle on Route 108. The police say he consented to a search of his belongings, revealing an I-zone camera and a black hooded sweatshirt that fit the victim’s description. The teenager identified Texter, who was surrounded by four officers, as her assailant, but only after the police took her aside.

Weisfeld argued Thursday that the identification and evidence taken from Texter’s bike should have been barred from trial. She said Texter — who claims innocence — was coerced into consenting to the search.

“I think he felt he had no choice but to comply,” she said.

Special Assistant Attorney General Lauren Zurier noted that the Superior Court judge ruled against those arguments at trial and asserted that the identification had not been “unnecessarily suggestive.” Finding the camera and the sweatshirt in plain view gave the officers reason to arrest.

Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg on Thursday appeared to back the officer’s methods.

“If there was ever justification for a show-up … this is the crime,” Goldberg said. A show-up is when a suspect is taken into custody near a crime scene and a witness is asked to make the identification at the arrest location.

Justice William P. Robinson III questioned how the officers’ actions could be construed as unnecessary knowing that at the time of Texter’s apprehension they were on the look-out for a potential felon.

Weisfeld said the girl could have easily, instead, been shown Texter’s digital image in a photographic line-up.

A jury found Texter, 46, guilty of two counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of simple assault after a five-day trial in November 2005. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, adding to the 39½ he received for violating probation.

At the time of his arrest in 2003, he was on probation for a previous rape. He was convicted in 1988 of raping a Westerly woman at knifepoint. A year later, he was convicted of kidnapping a pregnant woman and forcing her to perform oral sex at gunpoint. He served 13 years and was living in Narragansett while out on parole.

At the outset of Thursday’s arguments, McKenna noted the severity of Texter’s crimes: “He’s the closest thing to a serial sex abuser we’ve seen in awhile. He’s a serial sex abuser.”

Texter, who did not attend Thursday’s hearing, is being held at a maximum security prison in Massachusetts.

kmulvane@projo.com