A verdict has been reached in the case of the former Oklahoma City police officer who is accused of raping or sexually victimizing 13 women.
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Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw was charged with 36 counts of sexual assault involving more than a dozen women.
Oklahoma’s News9 channel is reporting that the sentences add up to 263 years in prison. During the entire trial, Holtzclaw insisted that he was innocent and did not testify in his own defense.
“YWCA Oklahoma CEO Jan Peery said she was pleased the Holtzclaw was held accountable”.
A 23-year-old woman told the court he assaulted her while she was handcuffed to a hospital bed, telling her to stay still so that her heart monitor would not activate. Their testimonies are consistent, and investigators said Global Positioning System data and phone records corroborate the victims’ stories.
All of the victims were women of color.
After one woman accused Holtzclaw of forcing her to perform oral sex, police identified 12 other women who said the officer had victimized them. Holtzclaw was placed on administrative leave during the investigation and was eventually fired. Holtzclaw’s attorney made those issues a cornerstone of his defense strategy.
The first woman to come forward was a grandmother in her 50s, who said Holtzclaw pulled her over during a traffic stop on suspicion of drunken driving.
The girl recalled Holtzclaw pulling up in his police vehicle as she walked home one night in June 2014.
The alleged assaults occurred over a period of seven months, with Holtzclaw becoming “more bold, more brazen and more violent” as time went on, prosecutors argued.
In fact, during the trial, one accuser was removed from the stand until she sobered up after she told the court, “I’m not going to lie”. “And he was like, ‘This is, you know, better than the county, ‘” she testified.
Throughout his trial, Holtzclaw, who turned 29 Thursday, did not contest that he had encountered the women, but maintained his innocence, the Guardian reported.
Perhaps Holtzclaw was in a jealous rage that his female rape victim had a boyfriend, but that resulted in the criminal stalking charge against him.
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Holtzclaw was also named, along with three other officers, in a 2014 wrongful death case, by the family of a man who died after being restrained by the officers in 2013. Holtzclaw was not included in that count because he has not yet lost his license.
