Sodomy trial begins in small Kansas town after struggle to find an impartial jury

[clueliss]

We aren't talking about the 'good' kind of impartial either.   Seriously, who the hell thinks that a 13 year old can consent?  What the living hell?  

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145215884.html

Quote

BY MAX LONDBERG

jlondberg@kcstar.com

A sodomy case has divided a small Kansas community so deeply that attorneys had trouble finding impartial jurors, with some seeming to cast blame on the 13-year-old alleged victim.

Jacob Ewing, 22, is accused of indecent liberties and aggravated criminal sodomy, and his trial began Monday in Holton, Kan.

During jury selection, comments reported by The Topeka Capital-Journal showed potential jurors who were skeptical from the outset about the alleged victim’s veracity, and some seemed to be angling to find the girl culpable.

(snip)

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145215884.html#storylink=cpy

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[JMO]

That is awful.  I feel sick.  We are talking about a 22 yo with a 13 yo.  WHAT?!?!  If she dressed like an 18 yo it's on her???  

[FloraKitty35]

I am sure these good heartland Christians wouldn't be so supportive of this if the perpetrator was a Muslim.  What a bunch of assholes.  

[Jug Band Baby]

On 4/18/2017 at 0:14 PM, JMO said:

That is awful.  I feel sick.  We are talking about a 22 yo with a 13 yo.  WHAT?!?!  If she dressed like an 18 yo it's on her???  

The literal only time I could even maybe give that a (partial) pass (and even begrudgingly, and not entirely) is if a couple people met in a club where you have to have ID to get in, and an under-18 used a fake ID.  Then the club has some answering to do for their bouncers not spotting fake ID.  Otherwise, anyone saying "But she looked 18" needs to be tossed behind bars immediately.

[louisa05]

The literal only time I could even maybe give that a (partial) pass (and even begrudgingly, and not entirely) is if a couple people met in a club where you have to have ID to get in, and an under-18 used a fake ID.  Then the club has some answering to do for their bouncers not spotting fake ID.  Otherwise, anyone saying "But she looked 18" needs to be tossed behind bars immediately.

Years ago, a friend of Mr 05 got arrested for sleeping with a 15 year old that he met in a bar. She got in with a fake ID and told him she was a student at a local college. She was with college students he knew, but they didn't bother telling him how young she was.

With testimony from the actual college kids she came in with and that the bar had id'ed then served her, his lawyer was able to plea the charges down. He served a few months for lower charges and didn't land on the registry. He was extremely lucky.

Then there is my cousin who got a 14 year old pregnant when he was 21. Her parents hosted a wedding. They had a second baby two years later and got divorced when she was all of 18. Terrible mess for all. And my dad pissed my grandmother off because when she was moaning that it wasn't a nice enough wedding, he told her to just be grateful her grandson wasn't going to jail. Grandma approved of it all though. Appalachia can be a different world.

[clueliss]

Follow up on this.  The Daisy Coleman story is featured in the documentary Audri and Daisy on Netflix. Where they speak about victim shaming.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article145605769.html

Quote

Holton, Kan., sodomy case draws parallel themes of victim shaming with previous cases

BY MAX LONDBERG

jlondberg@kcstar.com

 

In Maryville, Mo., in Dearborn, Mo., and now in Holton, Kan., victims and alleged victims of sexual assault are shamed as justice is sought.

The parallels between the cases are stark: a young girl is or is allegedly sexually assaulted, rumors and accounts swirl around town and then community members take sides, sometimes without evidence and little more than their visceral reaction to the reported events.

Take the case of Daisy Coleman. An alcohol-fueled party ended with Coleman abandoned on her front lawn, in 30-degree weather, by a group of older boys. Coleman was 14. Few dispute that during the party, a high school senior had sex with her, The Star reported.

But after initial support, some in her community of about 10,000 turned against Coleman, working to discredit her and humiliate her. A brother of one of the boys involved tweeted that he hoped she “gets whats comin.” She was booted from the cheerleading team. One person said Coleman was “asking for it.” At a dance competition, a girl arrived in a homemade shirt that read: Matt 1, Daisy 0.

Matthew Barnett later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment, but the evidence was insufficient to bring a felony sexual assault charge.

The Daisy Coleman case garnered international attention and inspired a documentary, “Audrie and Daisy,” which also follows the fallout from the sexual assault of Audrie Pott, then 15, in California. She had committed suicide after photos of her half-naked body violated with lewd messages scrawled by three 16-year-old boys were shared with classmates, Rolling Stone reported. The boys also digitally penetrated her, the magazine wrote.

In Dearborn, Darren Paden pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree statutory sodomy for abusing a girl hundreds of times over a decade.

In that case, The Star reported Paden’s community aligned themselves with or against Paden. Among his supporters were church elders, family, a former bank president and other prominent residents, The Star reported.

The victim, who had turned 18 before The Star’s 2015 article, was supported by some in her community but ostracized by others.

“I called a lady about a house she was renting,” the victim told The Star, “and I told her my name ... and she said, ‘I don’t want to rent to you.’ ”

Others who once socialized with her shunned her.

And now, in Holton, Kan., a 13-year-old was allegedly sodomized by a man. Jacob Ewing’s trial began this week, and at jury selection, potential jurors aired similar biases against the alleged victim as seen in other areas.

“If she steps out and looks like she’s 18 years old, that’s on her,” a man said, as reported by The Topeka Capital-Journal. Another asked why, if the girl could testify, she couldn’t consent to sex.

One resident of Holton, who spoke with The Star on the condition of anonymity, said community members were taking sides based on which family they are more familiar with.

“If you know one family, you’re more apt to believe them than if you know the other,” the resident said.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article145605769.html#storylink=cpy

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[clueliss]

The trial has started.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145816129.html

Quote

‘Going to prison for the rest of my life’: Jury hears words of man accused of sodomy

BY MAX LONDBERG

jlondberg@kcstar.com

 

HOLTON, KAN. 

Jacob Ewing sat rigidly, in a blue tie, white shirt and black slacks, as his defense attorney delivered a vigorous speech Thursday morning to 12 jurors — seven women, five men — exhorting them to find her client innocent of sodomizing and fondling a 13-year-old girl.

“The question you have to ask yourself is, ‘Is this girl credible?’ ” said Ewing’s attorney, Kathleen Ambrosio.

Ewing is charged with aggravated criminal sodomy and indecent liberties, crimes that carry mandatory life sentences, said Jacqie Spradling, the prosecutor in the case. A little before noon, the jurors filed into their deliberation room. They had been instructed that whether Ewing knew her age or not, if he had sex with the alleged victim, the law states he should be found guilty.

The case drew media attention because it divided this small Kansas community so deeply that attorneys had trouble finding impartial jurors, with some residents seeming to cast blame on the alleged victim.

The charges stem from an alleged incident between late February and late May 2014. Ewing allegedly drove the young girl he reportedly had been flirting with to a cemetery more than 10 miles from the child’s home, asked her or forced her out of the car and sodomized her.

The alleged victim testified that she remembered hearing animals chittering in the darkness, according to both attorneys.

The girl said she felt immobilized by Ewing during the assault, Spradling reminded the jurors in her closing argument.

Though Ambrosio called into question the girl’s slightly varying accounts of the night (she said there was a white-picket fence, but it’s wrought-iron; she couldn’t recall what she was wearing; she couldn’t identify the paving of the road to the cemetery), Spradling said forgetting what she called insignificant details is common in sexual assault victims.

“You tell me what you were wearing three years ago,” she said to the jurors.

The significant details are the ones that can’t be forgotten, Spradling said, repeating the words of a psychologist who testified earlier this week.

The alleged victim remembered key details of the attack — “in the cemetery at night, and she heard animal sounds,” Spradling said. “Why would she make this up?”

Ambrosio presented the argument that the girl invented the allegations to help another alleged victim of Ewing. The two alleged victims began communicating in 2016.

However, in 2014, the alleged victim in this week’s case talked about having sex with Ewing, Spradling and Ambrosio said, long before contact was made by the other victim.

Ewing faces four other rape charges and one attempted rape charge. None of those alleged victims are minors, Spradling said.

Both attorneys highlighted the fact that Ewing deleted messages from his social media accounts during the time of the alleged crime.

But some messages remained. Spradling showed a photo of Ewing, his face hovering over a table, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Ewing sent the photo to the 13-year-old. At another time, he sent a message asking why she is “so damn pretty,” Spradling said.

After the alleged incident, a friend wrote to Ewing, warning him that the girl was 13. He wrote back, “I thought she was 17,” a statement used by Spradling as a sign that he had committed the crime.

“That’s not an admission,” Ambrosio countered. “The state wants to suggest to you he didn’t deny it, so he must have done it.”

Spradling split her closing argument, bookending Ambrosio’s hourlong plea for exoneration, during which she warned the jurors that Spradling would present Ewing’s letters and phone conversations from jail.

“Guess what: I don’t get a chance to respond,” Ambrosio said.

She didn’t, but she shook her head from her seat as Spradling presented for the first time during the trial the letters and a recorded phone call.

“I’m probably going to be in here a long time,” Ewing’s voice said on the recording. And in letters, he wrote: “I have the mindset that I’ll never see outside of here again.” And “22 and going to prison for the rest of my life.” And a mumbled agreement with a relative who expressed hope for a hung jury.

“Those are not the words of a person who has not committed a crime,” Spradling said. “They are the words of someone who would like to get away with it.”

Ambrosio, as she neared the end of her allotted time, spoke softly and quietly to the jurors.

“There are too many questions, too many contradictions, and there is too little proof,” she said. “You have to go back and parse through all this and decide the fate of someone accused of terrible crime. Before you lay those consequences at his feet, you better make sure it’s right.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145816129.html#storylink=cpy

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[Howl]

 If the jury pool is that contaminated, they should have moved the trial to a larger city.  

Quote

Ewing faces four other rape charges and one attempted rape charge. None of those alleged victims are minors.....

This guy is going to prison one way or the other.  I so hope he is found guilty. 

[clueliss]

@Howl Holton is not that far from Topeka.  Where there would have perhaps been a larger pool of untainted people.  If concerned about media coverage out of Topeka then Wichita or metro KC would have been better choices.  

[Carm_88]

On 4/18/2017 at 4:44 PM, JMO said:

That is awful.  I feel sick.  We are talking about a 22 yo with a 13 yo.  WHAT?!?!  If she dressed like an 18 yo it's on her???  

I don't understand that at all. If there is a tainted jury pool, move it elsewhere. Make sure that this guy gets all the time behind bars that he deserves! Holy jesus! 

[clueliss]

Brace yourself.  They acquited the guy

http://www.kake.com/story/35205134/jurors-acquit-man-in-ne-kansas-sexual-assault-case?utm_medium=social&utm_source=KAKE-TV

Quote

Jurors acquit man in NE Kansas sexual assault case

Posted: Apr 20, 2017 7:25 PM CDTUpdated: Apr 20, 2017 7:25 PM CDT

written by Associated Press

 

 

HOLTON, Kan. (AP) -

Jurors have acquitted a northeast Kansas man of charges that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl in a rural cemetery.

Jurors in Kansas' Jackson County on Thursday found 22-year-old Jacob Ewing not guilty of charges of aggravated indecent liberties and aggravated criminal sodomy with a child under 14 years old.

Jurors deliberate northeast Kansas sexual assault case

Ewing still faces trials on charges alleging that he sexually assaulted five women. Ewing has entered not guilty pleas in those cases.

During the trial that ended Thursday, the teenager testified that Ewing sodomized her in 2014 while she pleaded for him to stop. A defense witness testified that the girl later bragged about the experience.

 

 

[Grimalkin]

That poor girl. This is so upsetting. I hope her parents can move out of state. She will never hear the end of it.

[RosyDaisy]

Time for some redneck justice!

[mstee]

That's so sad. Hopefully he gets found guilty on those other 5 (this guy seems to be a prolific predator at only 22) sexual assault cases. 

[NakedKnees]

What a lucky fucking rapist. I don't want to be that person who says anyone deserves to be forcibly sodomized, but this is pushing me damn close.

[Dugg@rTime]

Brit here, I'm confused. Why is he being tried for sodomy and not child rape/sex with a minor/ whatever it's called under US laws?

is sodomy a worse charge, it being "unnatural" and the bible saying don't do it? You'd think her being a child would make it worse not where on her body he abused her!

[Mercer]

7 hours ago, Dugg@rTime said:

Brit here, I'm confused. Why is he being tried for sodomy and not child rape/sex with a minor/ whatever it's called under US laws?

In some jurisdictions, the legal definition of "rape" is vaginal penetration with a penis, and any other act of sexual abuse is a different charge. It's rather archaic, but I assume the sodomy charge is because that definition most closely matches the crime under their statutes.

[Dugg@rTime]

Thanks for the explanation Mercer.

[CelticGoddess]

On April 18, 2017 at 3:05 PM, clueliss said:

We aren't talking about the 'good' kind of impartial either.   Seriously, who the hell thinks that a 13 year old can consent?  What the living hell?  

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145215884.html

 

Sadly, there are people who blame a 9yo for their abuse.  Or a 4 year old.   I bothers me but it no longer shocks me.  That is the main reason I never reported my rape.  I was blamed for it