Holtzclaw’s father – a police officer in his hometown of Enid, Oklahoma, about 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City – and his sister regularly sat behind him in the courtroom, as did other family members and friends who maintained their belief in his innocence.
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Holtzclaw, whose 29th birthday was Thursday, sobbed loudly as the judge read the verdicts.
“I am ashamed at the lack of coverage”, said Tezlyn Figaro, a former Oklahoma City resident and a media consultant who helped raise the profile of the trial.
Above all, the 13 women who testified that former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw had raped and sexually assaulted them thought no one would believe them. “I kept begging him, ‘Sir, don’t make me do this, please don’t make me do this, sir'”. But an all-white jury believed the victims, convicting Holtzclaw on 18 of 36 counts. After Sandra Bland died in police custody in Texas in July, a social-media movement sprang up to bring awareness to the experiences of Black women.
White man, black women.
On Thursday, Holtzclaw was found guilty of five counts of rape and 13 other counts of sexual assault against eight of the 13 black women who shared their stories with the court. He faces up to 263 years in prison, including 30-year sentences on each of four counts of first-degree rape.
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.
“I didn’t know what to do”, Ligons said. According to testimony, Holtzclaw would strip and grope women under the veil of a standard search, then levy his victims’ freedom against them, forcing them to perform sexual acts.
One question addressed at the press conference is how a police officer could prey on so many women without anyone noticing. A lot of them had criminal records.
Sexual misconduct committed by law enforcement officers is a problem that has concerned police chiefs for years. The AP’s yearlong probe revealed about 1,000 officers had lost their licenses for sex crimes or other sexual misconduct over a six-year period. Not every state has a process for banning problem officers from re-entering law enforcement, known as decertification. Prosecutors identified a pattern to Holtzclaw’s behavior, arguing that Holtzclaw backgrounded his victims and specifically targeted African-American women who had previous arrests or a history of drug possession, in the hopes that their allegations would not be believed. The same can be said of the trials surrounding Darren Wilson, Eric Garner, and even Michael Dunn. All his accusers are black. It’s all rather shocking until you re-consider the fact that this was an all-white jury.
Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said the case demonstrated that local authorities will pursue the race or heritage of the casualties. “And now people finally started paying attention”, said Crump.
On Facebook, Holtzclaw’s supporters have focused on undermining the credibility of his accusers.
In June 2014, Holtzclaw drove a 17-year-old girl to her mother’s house, prosecutors said. And even when convictions are won in cases where rape was the most serious charge, 11 percent don’t go to prison.
The AP does not identify victims of sex crimes without their consent and is not using the mother’s name, to avoid identifying her daughter.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the Oklahoma City Police Department said it was satisfied with the jury’s decision, believing “justice was served”.
The court heard from several women. “I didn’t call them”, one woman is reported to have said during a preliminary hearing past year.
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Jurors were told he raped another victim in her own bedroom, telling her: “This is better than the county (jail)”.
