Some good news for a change:
It took 45 hours over the course of four days for an all-white jury in Oklahoma City to decide whether or not they should convict former police officer Daniel Holtzclaw of sexual assault on the word of 13 black women. On Thursday night, the jury opted to believe (most of) them.
There is perhaps no bigger test of how blind justice could possibly be than asking any American jury – especially one that is all white and includes eight men – to believe 13 black women over a former police officer and supposed hero football player. It’s easy enough to point to cases where the police were acquitted. And yet, against all expectations this time, justice was blind.
Holtzclaw was found guilty for five counts of rape, 13 other counts of sexual assault – including six of sexual battery – against eight of the women who testified against him. In what felt like a unique moment, justice was not fooled by the aggressive defense mounted by Holtzclaw’s attorney, Scott Adams, which exploited racist stereotypes, class bias and fears about the majority-black east side community from which Holtzclaw culled his victims.
the sociopath cried like a baby and mouthed “how could you to the jury” when the sentence was read.
oldster
mouthed “how could you to the jury” when the sentence was read.
or perhaps,
mouthed “how could you” to the jury when the sentence was read.
Yeah, no sympathy for him. And I hope it is just part of a huge nation-wide wave of holding bad cops accountable. For too long they have gotten away with stuff.
SiubhanDuinne
I am very happy to see this verdict and probable sentence. Scum deserves every year of the rest of his sorry life behind bars. Cry me a fucking river, you fucking asshole.
Sad_Dem
Meanwhile, in Kern County.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Also, I’m glad to see that the media are finally paying attention to this story. I think several commenters yesterday, most notably lamh, were concerned that the whole thing had fallen under the radar. Glad this is not the case and that this horrible person’s crime, verdict, and sentence will be broadcast far and wide. Fucking scum.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
As lahm36 and others were pointing out, the guy chose black victims because he knew they wouldn’t be believed and he could get away with it. I’m glad he was successfully prosecuted, but it’s a little disturbing that 13 women had to be part of the case in order to get a prosecution.
Sad_Dem
Sacramento.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Sad_Dem:
When the California Supreme Court initially said that it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, the county clerk of Kern County stopped performing marriages so gay people would not be able to get married in her county.
IOW, not really a surprise. And investigations of police are not one of Jerry Brown’s strengths.
dr. bloor
More like, “how obviously fucking GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY he was.”
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
I am in awe of the victims’ courage in coming forward, especially the first one, knowing how thoroughly the system was likely to be stacked against them. And for every one who came forward, how many were there who were too terrified?
I don’t know what’s more vile: the way the defense relied on racist stereotypes of African-american women, or the fact that this sort of racism and misogyny is so common that Holtzclaw felt safe in his crimes.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
I’m very glad that Holtzclaw was convicted, but there is some striking hyperbole here that is not true.
No, it didn’t. It took them 45 hours to decide whether or not they should convict him of each one of 36 counts. That’s an hour and fifteen minutes for each count. I have no idea what order they went through the counts, but it almost certainly took them a lot less time to decide whether they were going to convict him of any of them.
This, too, misrepresents what happened. It did not take 13 women coming forward to produce a prosecution. It took, at most, two, and the investigation of the first one’s claim that Holtzclaw had raped her was ongoing, and making progress, when the second went to the police less than a month later. From that point, the police tracked down the other 11 victims represented by the charges eventually brought. We don’t really have a good idea as to whether or not charges would have been brought based upon the first woman’s complaint.
I get why women, especially women who have a criminal record or outstanding warrants, would be reluctant to go to the police with these kinds of accusations. It’s a completely justified reaction, because in many cases they won’t be taken seriously. However, in this particular instance, it looks like the police did take the women seriously. Yes, it helped that the second one was a middle class grandmother without any sort of criminal record, but the police were already making progress.
So, just maybe, we ought to stop with the denigration of people who actually defied those reasonable expectations. The OKC police did good work on this one. Let’s try to compliment them for it.
Belafon
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: So 13 women came forward, but he was only convicted of five rapes. It looks to me like it took more than two to get the prosecution.
Considering what it took to get people to believe what women were saying about Bill Cosby, it’s not that hard to think that it took more than two.
amk
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: yeah, the police did their fucking job, they deserve yuuuge kudos.
ruemara
What’s disturbing to me is that the neighborhood knew who he was and what he was doing. No one believed they could get the neighborhood predator to be convicted. Now how the fuck does that feel?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Police don’t decide on prosecutions. The fact that prosecutors felt they needed 13 victims to agree to testify before they could take the case to court is pretty telling.
The Other Chuck
Cop and serial rapist going behind bars … something tells me his life expectancy is going to be far shorter than his sentence.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Telling how?
Suzanne
Boo-dee-hoo-dee-hoo, fucker. I don’t imagine prison will be a good place to be an ex-cop.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
How many victims are usually called to testify in a serial rape case?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): As many as are found.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Exactly.
Suzanne
@The Other Chuck: Riiiight?
This ends in a shivving in six months.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I don’t think it’s necesarily a correct inference that the prosecution “felt they needed 13 victims to agree to testify before they could take the case to court.” It’s actually much more likely that the state waited until the investigation found the number of victims who could be found before proceeding to trial.
sacrablue
@Sad_Dem: I was on that jury. Fortunately, we had DNA evidence for the first two attacks. The victim was unable to testify, but the defense introduced into evidence the video of the her first interview with detectives. It was excruciating to watch because she suffered from aphasia and the detectives at that point didn’t know how to communicate with her. Sixty- two years to life wasn’t a bad outcome.
Vince
@Mnemosyne (tablet): What are you talking about they “needed” 13 victims? During the course of their investigation they found 13 victims. Should they have just stopped at the first one or two?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): ^ necessarily. And what Omnes also noted, more succinctly than I. No doubt to conserve his comma supply.
Mike in NC
Have the Republicans come out with a platform about legitimate rape this cycle?
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I’ve acquired shares in a Costa Rican comma mine, so I am actually quite well supplied.
max
@Belafon: So 13 women came forward, but he was only convicted of five rapes. It looks to me like it took more than two to get the prosecution.
I cannot tell if they had 36 solid counts (all cases easily qualifying as past the reasonable doubt bar) or if they had only had had enough for indictment on some. If they had 22 solid cases, and 14 less solid cases, for example, they could just bring them all at the same time, unless the prosecution had another better reason not to do so, or the defense wanted to sever.
(If the defense felt they had a solid enough defense, it is curious that they didn’t sever, but there’s also paying money for legal fees and perhaps a belief they couldn’t lose, since they had presumably struck all the black jurors.)
They may have only needed two, or they may have had to go through all 13 or some other combination, to find the evidence needed to tie any particular case to the guy.
max
[‘They got a fuckton of convictions and they’re going to file civil suits, which might very well bring the other 18 counts into range. Seems good.’]
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Vince:
So you disagree with the basic premise of the article that black women who say they were raped are less likely to be believed, especially when the accused rapist is a cop? The number of victims presented just happened to be so large that the jury was unable to dismiss all of the charges? Women are so eager to publicly testify that they were raped that it’s easy to get them to agree to cooperate with prosecutors?
I think the prosecutors presented such a large number of victims to make it harder for the defendant to claim they were all liars.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
As I told Belafon in a comment eaten by WordPress, what it’s telling is that you don’t have any idea what happened. The first accuser went to the police in late May 2014. The second in June 2014. From there, the police instituted a search for other victims, involving identifying women whose records Holtzclaw had looked up on the computer system and reviewing the GPS tracking data of his car. Holtzclaw was indicted in August 2014.
Exactly how fast would they have had to indict him for you to think that that took the accusations seriously enough for a prosecution based upon a smaller number of accusations? The next day? Sorry, but all of the evidence we have for this case indicates that the OKC police and prosecutors took it seriously from the word go.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): In your expert opinion, if all of the victims had been white, how many counts would have been charged and how many victims brought forth?*
*I do not disagree with your premise that the sheer volume of evidence came into play here. I just disagree that it is reason that 13 victims were offered as witnesses.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@max:
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the defense got overconfident — after all, it’s a bunch of black women against a cop. Who thought the prosecution would actually win with an all-white jury deciding?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@ruemara:
It goes beyond disturbing to all sorts of other adjectives indicating bad things. And based upon history, it’s completely understandable that they didn’t think they would be believed.
My main point (to others, not you) is that, when we have a case like this in which everything we see indicates that the police did take them seriously, we need to report it that way. The only way that people will ever become less pessimistic about being heard by the authorities is to have the authorities believe people in similar circumstances and then let it be known that they were taken seriously. Slamming the police and prosecutors indiscriminately, even when they do their jobs right, doesn’t help.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Defenses are paid not to get overconfident.
West of the Cascades
@Suzanne: Oh for fucks’ sake, people — if you’re calling for the death penalty for him, go ahead and just say so. I’m disgusted by his crimes and glad he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail, but I don’t wish him an early, painful, unlawful death. The brutality of our current prison system shouldn’t be some “extra early raping and death sentence” — because if it is for this dirty cop, it will be for the young kid who pled guilty when he wasn’t just to save facing a longer sentence.
Seriously, grow the fuck up.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Union lawyers don’t do these defenses. Union funds pay for criminal defense attorneys. As a general rule….
Vince
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Nice straw man.
Is 13 some magic number that’s too large to ignore unlike 7 or 10 or 12?
I don’t understand why you’re angry that the police and DA tried to investigate this serial rapists crimes as thoroughly as they could. Many times, it seems that these kinds of accusations are ignored as untrue or one time things. This time, the police did exactly what they’re supposed to do and investigated and uncovered more victims and you’re not happy they did it! What do you want them to have done? Stopped at the first woman who came forward and not try to get just for his other victims?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Based on my background, training and experience, I respectfully disagree. Women are often disbelieved in rape cases, especially women who have criminal arrests or convictions. With 13 victims, I’d have offered all of their testimony regardless of the race of the victims or the accused. The volume of evidence is always useful in serial cases, especially rape cases.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sorry, how far back in premises do we have to go here? Do I need to find links showing that the rapes of black women are less often prosecuted than the rapes of white women, or can we agree on that as a basic premise?
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yes, rape is always “he said/she said.” More complaining witnesses are better because, although the jury should consider each count individually, the numbers add up. So, as you said, race immaterial, I would try to present as many as possible. Plus, to be starry-eyed for a moment, a prosecutor should be seeking justice fore each victim. I see no evidence that the prosecutors here didn’t do their job exactly as they should have done.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
As for not getting convictions on charges related to all of the victims, a large part of the problem is that some of them really were bad witnesses. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense of being bad people, just that it was always going to be hard for a jury to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the charges were true.
As I’ve said in other cases, rape is a very difficult crime to prove when there isn’t any physical evidence. In this instance, the cases without physical evidence came down to the competing credibilities of two people, and a jury not only needs to think that the accuser is the one telling the truth, they need to be certain of that beyond a reasonable doubt. That makes them crimes for which our legal system cannot ever be satisfactory, because it’s ill equipped to make that sort of this or that distinction when everything looks like it’s in between.
More than one of the accusers not only had a criminal record, they were high on drugs (PCP in at least one case, and alcohol in a couple of others) when the rapes occurred. That doesn’t make an assault any less heinous, but it cannot help but come into play when a jury has to decide who they believe.
In the case of Holtzclaw, my guess is that the jury probably punted on a few counts and decided that they had convicted him on enough of the more easily decided counts to put him away for life. That doesn’t make it any easier to be one of those five women who were told that the jury didn’t believe them, but the jury probably wasn’t thinking about it that way. And, frankly, a jury shouldn’t be thinking about it that way. Given the high bar that a case needs to clear to secure a conviction, I really wish that we had a better way to provide validation to a rape victim than a trial verdict.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Vince:
You realize that one (1) win doesn’t actually fix the underlying problem, right?
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I don’t understand where you think we disagree. I think the prosecution presented a large number of victims to make it harder for the defense to claim that they were all lying. Where’s the disagreement?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): My point is that the prosecutors in this case seem to have behaved appropriately here. It is what they should have done whatever the race of the complaining witnesses. I am not trying to make it larger than this case. A case that I think was a win for justice.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Yes, we can. In fact, no one here has done anything but agree that the legal system usually gives short shrift to black women who make these kinds of accusations.
Can we also agree on the premises that the police should investigate a serial rapist as far as possible and that prosecutors should not bring charges until they have amassed the evidence that at least resembles their whole case?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Right. Do you realize that a part of fixing the underlying problem is publicly acknowledging when the authorities do it right?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Many people — myself included — are trying to figure out what was different about this case that allowed it to actually result in a successful prosecution. Right now, it’s looking like it was a one-off, lucky case that just happened to gel correctly, so forgive me if I’m not ecstatic that something that was essentially a freak accident happened to lead to justice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You are entitled to your opinion. Me, I see a well investigated and prosecuted case. My suspicion is that most similar cases are not well investigated or prosecuted. I say celebrate the good result and encourage other PDs and DAs to do the same.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mnemosyne (tablet): The fact that prosecutors felt they needed 13 victims to agree to testify before they could take the case to court is pretty telling.
The bolded part is where we disagree. Did I mention the background, training, and experience basis for my assertion?
You prosecute the case with the victims that the investigation identifies. There were 13 victims identified. There’s no magic number that makes it harder to assert the victims are lying. There’s generally a pattern in serial crimes, whether they are sexual assault, other assaults, or burglary. The pattern of “same or similar” is what establishes the serial nature of the crimes. Credibility of witnesses is a distinct issue.
Credibility of rape victims is always problematic because it’s “he said/she said” and US culture seems to strongly favor the assertions of the accused in rape cases.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Have you at least considered the possibility that it wasn’t a freak accident, thus implying that there’s nothing to learn from it. Maybe, just maybe, it was the result of police officers and prosecutors who took their jobs seriously and went out with the intention of proving their case in front of a jury.
No, you’re right. It has to be nothing more than a freak accident. It’s just one of those things that happen with no explanation.
seaboogie
Quibble amongst yourselves on the other issues – but in the schadenfreude department, Mr. Entitled Star Linebacker, was found guilty today on his birthday. No wonder he mouthed “how could you?” to the jury – this was not the birthday present he was expecting. He is now on suicide watch. Poster-boy for WATB slash entitled douchebag slash so much more….
Gwangung
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Given the way justice usually goes when it attempts to prosecute a police officer, it is not necessarily wrong or too cynical to state so.
Ruckus
@Gwangung:
Thank you.
We all see and hear recordings of cops doing what looks like beatings or murder and getting away with it because they are never even being tried. It’s not hard to imagine all cops are basically a tax paid gang, even when we know it to be not true. Because it almost is in many places, especially if you are the right shade of darker. Kern County, CA has the highest police caused death rate per capita in the entire nation, according to the Guardian. And this in an overall liberal state.
It’s not difficult to think that justice is blind, harsh and often times no more than vigilante punishment.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Gwangung: Yes, actually, it is. Suspecting that something like that is going to happen is reasonable. But once the events have taken place, learning the facts of what happened when they are available before stating what you think happened really isn’t too much to ask.
Gwangung
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: But that’s not really an explanation either. If it’s the result of officers and prosecutors taking their job seriously, then why isn’t this the rule and not the exception? It implies they DONT take their jobs seriously the rest of the time. So how do we get them to go this all the time?
ruemara
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I’m sorry, but I must disagree. This is a freak accident. This is 1 in a million. You’re busy beating on on Mem, but the frank truth is, for the black female community, we’re feeling like a unicorn showed up. It’s not “the DA & police did their jobs seriously”. We’re surprised they even did that much. We’re surprised a jury that largely looks like Holtzclaw McFootball Hero actually convicted him. We’re blown away by that. So while I do appreciate the basic good police work & conviction, you’re going to have to accept something. The happiness is tempered by this being so fucking odd that you might as well call it a lottery win. Show us this can happen more than once and then that attitude will change.
Suzanne
@West of the Cascades: Fuck you. I’m not taking any pleasure in the fact that our prisons are basically zoos. I am, however, being realistic.
I’m happy he’s going to be punished severely, and I’m happy that women will be safer without this man walking around. It doesn’t change the fact that this dude will be in loads of danger. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but I also won’t lose any sleep over it.
And once again, fuck you.
Sad_Dem
@sacrablue: Wow–small world. Thank you for your service. I couldn’t be on a jury like that if I told the truth during voir dire.
Sad_Dem
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Kern County–also home to that insane prosecutor–I hope he’s been replaced by now.
Darkrose
@ruemara: All of this. I was shocked that an all-white jury convicted a white male cop of raping black women. I’m glad that justice was done, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to assume it’ll happen again.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Hate to say it, but the first thing that occurred to me is that the perpetrator is half Asian. Would he have walked if he’d been whiter?
Barry
@Ruckus: “ern County, CA has the highest police caused death rate per capita in the entire nation, according to the Guardian. And this in an overall liberal state.”
Please note that coastal California is liberal; inland CA can be as Tea Party as anyplace else.
LAC
@ruemara: THIS!!! I am relieved and it is good news. But thank you for pointing out what is being glossed over: that too often our lives and bodies are not valued and crimes like this go unpunished. And before I give the police dept golf claps, they hired this cretin and he did this for period of time.
trnc
@amk:
So you you don’t think the story needs to be changed, even if Pseudo is correct?
I get paid well for my job and I’m not entitled to praise for it, but it still helps me keep a positive attitude. With all of the crappy police practices we hear about on a daily basis, is it really a problem to give credit where it’s due?
Some Loser
Ah, it’s good to see Balloon-Juice being Balloon-Juice.
It’s also good to see that this sick fuck getting his just desserts. Can’t wait ’til his sentencing.
J R in WV
I also want to point out – on this no doubt dead thread – that rape is a “he said, she said” thing less and less today. Often rapists leave DNA evidence behind. Perhaps not in a victim, if he wears a condom, but all it takes is a drop somewhere on her clothes.
Further, in this particular case, the cop/idiot used police databases to look up potential victims, people with convictions or pleas. Then these women came to the police accusing the cop/idiot or raping them. That’s a pattern, and goes way beyond “she said / he said”.
I’m glad this worm was convicted. It was obvious there at the end of the trial when the jury’s verdict was read out, that the cop/worm was shocked that an all-white jury in Oklahoma would believe the accusations of a whole platoon of black victims! But as I pointed out, it wasn’t just the testimony of the victims, there were many other threads of evidence that implicated this cop/monster in these serial crimes.
I’m hoping he never sees daylight again without the stripes of bars across the sky.
Now we’re talking justice!