Victimizing A Rape Victim -- Throwing Her In Jail For A Month To Force Her To Testify
The government theft of people's money and stuff under cover of law -- "civil asset forfeiture" -- is obscene. But this is a step beyond that -- a step sicker.
Jack Burns writes at The Free Thought Project:
Houston, TX -- A Houston woman has been traumatized by the District Attorney's office, following her report of being raped by a serial rapist. According to Click2Houston, "Jenny, who is in her 20s, was the star witness in the rape trial of Keith Hendricks after he violently raped and choked her. Hendricks was eventually sentenced to two life sentences for raping women."But during the trial, Jenny broke down while testifying against Hendricks. Fearing that her star witness would not return to testify, prosecutors decided Jenny, who suffers from bipolar disorder, would need to go to the hospital, and then to jail. Yes, that's right. After a brief stay at St. Joseph's Medical Center, Jenny was "handcuffed, put in the back of a patrol car and taken to jail," according to her attorney Sean Buckley.
Adding insult to injury, apparently, not only was the witness raped, forced to testify in front of others about her trauma but then she was rewarded by being forced to spend nearly a month in jail. A month!
Yes, here's a woman who was caged -- caged! -- not because she was the criminal or did anything criminal, but perhaps in large part because the prosecutor wanted a win.
Even if the rapist might go free, this is not a reason to take away another person's freedom. See what Ogg, the new prosecutor, points out below.
The highly unusual move occurred when prosecutors presented the trial judge with a "witness bond." The judge, Stacey W. Bond, signed the order but cannot comment on the case because the rapist is appealing his conviction. So to paint the picture, at least for around 30 days, both the victim and the perpetrator were locked behind bars. This miscarriage of justice just re-victimized the victim and led to a historic shake-up in the district attorney's office.Kim Ogg, a former prosecutor, used Jenny's case to highlight one of the many injustices she perceived to be taking place in Houston. Ogg, who successfully ran against the DA (Devon Anderson) whose office put Jenny in jail, used Jenny's story to get elected. At the time of the jailing of the rape victim, Ogg was highly critical of Anderson's office. She told reporters, "Putting a witness in jail on a material witness bond, is highly irregular and reserved for the worst of the worst witnesses, maybe gang cases.
"They can be protected by placing them in a hotel, they can be placed with family, you can keep in contact," she said saying there must have been another way to get Jenny the medical help she needed and still ensure her testimony.
...Buckley and Jenny are now suing the city. The attorney told reporters that neither her medical records nor her medicines came with her after she left the psychiatric unit and was presented to the jail. She stated the medical staff at the jail didn't know that she was actually a witness and not a criminal.
Barbaric. And people on psych meds -- or any meds -- may die without them or go through sometimes terrible and/or life-threatening withdrawal.
It's a shame that prosecutors who victimize victims (or engage in other misconduct) aren't made to pay some of the costs when the victims sue. (And no, I'm not talking about mistakes made on the job but the kind of egregious misconduct seen here.)
via ifeminists
I'm no lawyer, but I imagine this would be valuable information for Hendricks' defense attorney.
Couldn't he argue that her testimony is not credible because it's given under duress?
Glad they're suing the city. However, it is unfortunate that any settlement they might win will not result in disbarment for Devon Anderson or removal from the bench for Stacey Bond.
Patrick at January 15, 2017 10:40 PM
Simple solution: release the rapist for lack of evidence. There, all better.
Radwaste at January 16, 2017 3:53 AM
1. Another Democratic voting location (loved Hillary).
2. The DA lost the next election so there's hope for the masses.
Bob in Texas at January 16, 2017 5:37 AM
"release the rapist for lack of evidence."
You don't get to jail an innocent person to force them to testify, no matter what the cause.
And as Ogg points out, there are other ways of getting somebody to testify that don't including victimizing a rape victim and psychiatric patient by jailing that person.
Amy Alkon at January 16, 2017 5:48 AM
You know there is often another side to the story, right? I live in Houston, so I heard and followed this story. It was a lot more complex than you are getting here. For those of you who think Ogg is some great savior of the people of Houston, you should know she is a lefty who was totally bankrolled by George Soros. I expect that we will see crime, in an already high crime area, continue to escalate. Sorry if I can get excited about that. Here is Jenny's father talking about what happened to his daughter and how he is grateful to Devon Anderson's office for saving her life.
http://abc13.com/politics/father-of-jailed-rape-victim-supports-prosecutors-actions/1576708/
Sheep Mom at January 16, 2017 6:06 AM
Under what legal theory does one detain a witness in lock up for a month?
If it is for mental health reasons, she becomes an unreliable witness.
This goes back to my theory that many bureaucrats view the average person not as a citizen to be served, but as a resource to be used.
Until they're no longer useful, then they may be discarded.
I R A Darth Aggie at January 16, 2017 7:25 AM
Your local knowledge TRUMPS our understanding Sheep Mom but jeez how stupid can someone be?
Get the family members to say they asked for that protection instead of beating your chest saying "I KNOW BEST".
"I'm going to refer you to the family members for their perspective out of respect for this poor poor young woman's situation."
Why give the elected position away to the bad guys.
Bob in Texas at January 16, 2017 7:46 AM
I had read about this case on Balko's blog. As Sheep Mom says, it's not quite as cut-and-dried as it appears at first, although I'm bound to say that I'm not all on board with the prosecutor's actions either. What her parents may think cuts little ice with me - she is an adult and can make her own decisions, and if she cannot by reason of mental defect, then she needs to be dealt with according to law, and not according to what Daddy thinks is best.
If there was no mental-health basis on which to detain her, then there is no justification that I can see to detain her just to keep her around. A subpoena works fine for all other witnesses, and I contend that the state's interest in prosecuting a criminal case does not outweigh her liberty. Any witness can leave the jurisdiction if they choose, the prosecutor's opinions about their likelihood of doing so nothwithstanding. To a certain extent, I'd say that a prosecutor must take his witnesses as he find them, and if she has mental health issues that are not serious enough to detain her for her own safety, but serious enough to cause her to flee for whatever reasons are going on in her head - that's too bad. We don't jail one person, in order to try and jail another. Get a better witness, or lose the case.
I've seen this sort of trickery done before - the threat of arrest on past warrants, and sometimes an actual arrest for some penny-ante crap - in order to get the witness into the county jail and/or keep them handy for prosecution. It's a very short step from there to threatening to lock somebody up - or actually locking them up - until they provide testimony that is pleasing to the prosecutor. It's a very slippery slope. We should stay off it. When everyone in the criminal classes has warrants or other connections with the CJS, this approach means that virtually-any witness is liable to be suborned in this way. Better that we let the occasional criminal go free.
llater,
llamas
llamas at January 16, 2017 8:31 AM
Here's another take that I think is pretty smart from Murray Newman, former prosecutor with the Harris County DA's Office and current defense attorney.
Dwight Brown at January 16, 2017 9:16 AM
If you read the whole piece, you will find that she was not detained so she could testify against her will. She was detained under a court ordered psych hold bc she was suicidal and her mother refused to vouch for her safety and provide her a safe place to stay. The mental facilities were at capacity and there was no where else to take her. I don't know the "theory of law" under which the judge signed the order, but I am pretty sure she and the prosecutor discussed the ramifications of this action and the judged wouldn't have signed the order if it was illegal. The reason the court can't comment on the details of the case is because the defendant has appealed his conviction and this is one of his grounds for appeal. This was not just the dark hand of the state coming down and punishing this woman because it could. The situation was extremely complex and more nuanced than the posted article makes it sound. It's really easy to take pot shots when the other side is bound by law from responding.
Sheep mom at January 16, 2017 10:40 AM
Sheep Mom wrote:
'If you read the whole piece, you will find that she was not detained so she could testify against her will. She was detained under a court ordered psych hold bc she was suicidal and her mother refused to vouch for her safety and provide her a safe place to stay.'
Well, that's not quite a true description either. If one reads a full description of the case, we find that she was initially sent to a hospital following some sort of breakdown, released from the hospital and immediately detained on a material witness bond. So she did not spend a month in the Harris County jail on a 'court ordered psych hold' - she was there on a court-ordered witness bond. The judge and prosecutor may have thought or hoped that she would be held in a secure mental health facility, but that wasn't the basis for the order - it was a witness bond, not a 'psych hold'.
The attitude of the prosecutor's office (maybe not the individual prosecutor) was made quite clear - they decided to find a way to hold her because they had already prejudged the defendant in her case as guilty, and they felt that holding her was preferable to freeing him.
FWIW, I suspect that there was some helping-along here. What I mean by that is that the prosecutor knew full-well that a court-ordered psych evaluation would not detain the witness for more than a few days, at which point she would be either a) set free or b) committed. Either way, she would no longer be available as a witness. So they went down this road, so that they could say later that they tried to treat her as a mental-health patient but - oh, shucks - there just wasn't a bed available in a mental health facility. We tried, we really did. What else could we do?
While the story is more-complex than some of the reporting, and some of the motivations may have been good, the basic story - Rape victim held a month in Harris County Jail to ensure that she was available to testify in rape case - is about 99% accurate.
The statement that 'the judge wouldn't have signed the order if it was illegal' betrays a certain naivete. It transpires that the order that the judge signed was entirely illegal under two entirely-separate pieces of Texas criminal procedure - jurisdiction, and ability to pay bond. Now, whether the prosecutor misled the judge, or the judge didn't know the law, doesn't change the fact that the witness bond was manifestly illegal.
llater,
llamas
llamas at January 16, 2017 11:25 AM
I believe this qualifies the prosecutor for judge.
Richard Aubrey at January 17, 2017 7:22 PM
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