Prosecutors said he’d systematically targeted the vulnerable: black women living on the margins of public life, some of them teenagers, some of them with criminal records.
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A grandmother’s bravery in telling her story made all the difference this time. The jury appeared to all be white, though Oklahoma court officials said they did not have race information for jurors.
“I didn’t do anything wrong”, the grandmother said Friday, showing her face on camera and revealing her name as Jannie Ligons.
“I was out there alone and helpless, didn’t know what to do”, Ligons told reporters at a news conference on Friday, according to the Washington Post.
“In my mind all i could think was that he was going to shoot me, he was going to kill me”.
“I was so afraid”. “The only thing I could see was my life flash before my eyes and the gun on his right hip … I kept begging him, ‘Sir, don’t make me do this, please don’t make me do this, sir'”. Don’t make me do this, sir.
Hours after a jury convicted former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw of raping and sexually abusing eight different women, his victims and their supporters gathered at the same courthouse to raise a troubling question: why wasn’t Holtzclaw caught sooner? His victims want the judge to impose the maximum sentence of 263 years in prison.
But others, including one of the victims’ mothers, said they were waiting for the formal sentencing before deciding whether justice had been done. Holtzclaw is half-white, half-Japanese.
Crump was flanked by Ligons and Shardayreon Hill, who testified that Holtzclaw assaulted her while she was handcuffed to a hospital bed. “I didn’t call them”, one woman is reported to have said during a preliminary hearing previous year.
“I was scared. I felt like I had to do that”, Hill told CBS News. “I felt like I was in survival mode”. “Me being in the room with the police, not expecting to get violated the way I did, the way I was done, I just couldn’t even believe it. I was speechless. She was in a position to believe that if she went to police, something would be done”.
The verdict left the Rev. Al Sharpton “somewhere between jumping and shouting “Hallelujah” and feeling aggrieved for the women”.
Holtzclaw’s trial began in early November and was criticized by activists after an all-white jury was chosen to decide on crimes committed against black women. “African-American voices have never been heard in Oklahoma”. “Who do you report him to?” They showed that sex-related cases were the third most prevalent in numbers, preceded by violence and profit-motivated crimes. “We should take it as a sign of progress that Holtzclaw was convicted”, she said. According to the investigation, between 2009 and 2014, “550 officers were decertified for sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest, or gratuitous pat-downs”.
Low arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates are some of the factors that discourage survivors from reporting to police. For them it’s about whatever’s going on in the moment.
“It’s hard all the way through the system”, said Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. “What police do you call to report on the police?” The very few who are tried in court can be portrayed as heroes, swaying juries.
“Justice was done today, and a criminal wearing a uniform is going to prison now”, Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said.
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“Don’t let this be the only time that you come forward when people of color confront you with a situation that is not always favorable to your so-called dialect”, Pruitt told the media. “We are satisfied with the jury’s decision and firmly believe justice was served”. “All kinds of sex offenders, particularly intelligent ones, they pick their victims because they know they’re less likely to be believed”.
