Officer guilty of raping black women ‘picked the wrong lady’

A jury in the United States has found a former Oklahoma City police officer guilty of rape and sexual battery.

All 13 of the women are black.

Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, was facing dozens of charges alleging he sexually assaulted several women while on duty.

Ligons has a pending federal civil lawsuit against Holtzclaw and the city of Oklahoma City, filed on behalf of several victims. Court records describe Holtzclaw as “Asian or Pacific Islander”.

“Daniel Holtzclaw trembled and sobbed as judge Timothy Henderson read through the 36 charges brought against him”. He faces 36 counts of rape, sexual battery and other charges. Count 2, procuring lewd exhibition, not guilty. The last was a teenager who said Holtzclaw raped her on her mother’s front porch.

Nate Billings/AP Holtzclaw was convicted Thursday on charges related to eight of the 13 accusers, including four counts of first-degree felony rape and two counts of forcible oral sodomy. The jury recommended a 30-year sentence on each of those counts. An appeal is expected.

District Attorney David Prater said Thursday the four days of deliberations are the longest he remembers for any jury. I couldn’t believe what was going on was really going on.

Prater said he’ll be asking the judge “to make sure that this defendant never sees the light of day”, by seeking to have his punishment run consecutively. Activists outside the courthouse on Friday said they will closely watch Holtzclaw’s sentencing on January 21. Oklahoma City police chief Bill Citty fired Holtzclaw before the trial began. “Some might not consider them model citizens, but they were citizens”.

“We are proud of our detectives and prosecutors for a job well done”.

“You trusted us, and we appreciate that”.

The accused officer typically has no criminal background, passionate supporters often show up in the gallery, and juries may believe an officer’s firing is punishment enough, Marquis said.

Holtzclaw’s attorney, Scott Adams, asked the girl during the trial about perceived inconsistencies in her testimony as well as her use of drugs. It also challenged the validity of DNA evidence.

On Friday morning, two of his victims, Janie Liggins and Sharday Hill, spoke at a press conference, where they stated the verdict suggests there is “hope for our society”.

Tezlyn Figaro, who is credited with reaching out to Crump and pushing for the case to get more attention, said, “I am ashamed at the lack of coverage from Oklahoma City media as well as the national, with not covering this case as it should have been from Day One”.

The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sex crimes and is not using the mother’s name so as not to identify her daughter, who was 17 when she was attacked. You’re going to give me head, sex or you’re going to jail’. “There is a tendency not to value black women the way other women are valued”.

“He just picked the wrong lady to stop that night”, said Jannie Logins, the victim who triggered the investigation into Holtzclaw after she reported him.

The woman whose report launched the police investigation into a former Oklahoma City police officer convicted of 18 charges including first-degree rape says she knew she didn’t do anything wrong.

Most rapes go unpunished in America, and sex crime convictions are even more unlikely when law enforcement officers are accused, said Kimberly Lonsway, a research director at End Violence Against Women International.

A second victim, Shaudae Harris, was sexually assaulted by Holtzclaw while handcuffed to a bed at an Oklahoma City hospital. The jury did not convict on Hill’s allegations, and her father, Tyral Muhammad, said Holtzclaw’s supervisors and others should have caught him sooner.

I didn’t think that no one would believe me. Adams questioned several women at length about whether they were high when they allegedly encountered Holtzclaw. And he said that such crimes are also happening beyond Oklahoma City.

“We are pleased with the 18 counts we received, but we are not pleased with the 18 counts we didn’t”. “The 18 that were not guilty are reflective of an issue we have in this country”.

The defence attacked the credibility of the women who testified against Holtzclaw, saying they were dishonest. “That is a problem”. The victim who finally turned him in was a woman he targeted who had no criminal record and no history of drug abuse to discredit her. Many of his 13 victims were actually sought out by investigators as they compared his recorded traffic stops to searches for arrest warrants. And that’s exactly who authorities accused Holtzclaw of targeting.