m***y
发帖数: 14763 | 1 笑点太多 无力吐糟
这就是梁彼得用生命来捍卫的布鲁克林人民.控告他的也就是同一帮对强奸和乱伦不作
为的布鲁克林检控官...
Prosecutors Will Move to Dismiss Charges in Brooklyn Rape Case
By AL BAKER and MICHAEL WILSONFEB. 24, 2016
Photo
Five teenage boys were accused of attacking an 18-year-old woman at the
Osborn Playground in Brownsville in January. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New
York Times
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Prosecutors in Brooklyn plan on moving to dismiss first-degree rape charges
against all five teenagers accused of attacking an 18-year-old woman on a
playground in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in January, officials said on Wednesday.
Almost from the moment the explosive allegations were made public, the case
was dogged by questions about the accounts by the woman and her father, who
later admitted they had been having sex in the park that night, and about
the city’s handing of the case, which was criticized as being too slow.
The woman gave several conflicting accounts of what had occurred on Jan. 7
in Osborn Playground, two law enforcement officials said. The father
admitted that the assailants had not had a gun, as he had initially told the
police. And in recent days, the woman has told prosecutors that she was
unwilling to testify or otherwise cooperate further with the investigation,
according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
provide details that have not been made public.
So, even as prosecutors learned more about the young woman’s deeply
troubled childhood in foster care, they decided that the case could not go
forward, and on Wednesday, the Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson,
said that he would ask the court to dismiss the charges.
“That night, this young woman’s father and the five young men engaged in
conduct that was reprehensible and wrong, but because of the lack of
reliable evidence, criminal charges simply cannot be sustained,” Mr.
Thompson said in a statement.
Snippets of cellphone videos, as well as other evidence prosecutors gathered
, did not support the woman’s allegations that the suspects had forced
themselves on her, the officials said. In interviews, they said, she and her
father both admitted that the teenagers who approached them had not
brandished a gun. And the woman and her father ultimately admitted they were
having sexual relations in the park before the encounter with the five
teenagers, the officials said.
The charges will be dismissed with prejudice, which means prosecutors are
precluded from reinstating the charges even if additional evidence emerges.
Lawyers for the five men embraced Mr. Thompon’s decision, calling it a
relief to their clients and their families. But they expressed differing
views on his language regarding the conduct of the teenagers that night as
“reprehensible and wrong.”
“I have great respect for him, but I respectfully disagree with that
characterization he put forth there,” said Spencer Leeds, the lawyer for
one of the young men, Onandi Brown. “I don’t view Onandi’s conduct at any
time as being reprehensible, based on our investigation of the case.”
A lawyer for another, Abdula R. Greene, who represented Ethan Philips,
called Mr. Thompson’s statement “a little bit of a smear on their
character.”
But Ken Montgomery, a lawyer for Denzel Murray, another of the teenagers,
did not find fault with the choice of words. “I think that is a way, from a
policy and social standpoint, to say, `Young men should exercise a little
bit better judgment in dealing with certain things,’ but what they did didn
’t rise to criminality,” Mr. Montgomery said. “I would agree, in a sense,
that we live in a country and a world where we have a lot of unhealthy
ideas of what appropriate sexual relationships are.”
Mr. Thompson’s decision was a pivotal, if not entirely surprising, turn in
case a case that dominated news headlines and roiled New York City for days
early in the year.
The police were initially criticized by some community leaders as waiting
too long to alert the public to the report of the rape — the police
released surveillance video of the suspects two days after the alleged
attack — and Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J.
Bratton said officials should have alerted residents sooner.
Yet from early on, inconsistencies and other disclosures made it clear the
case would be an uphill battle for Mr. Thompson, who called for “justice
for the victim” but also made clear the case demanded a careful, thorough
investigation.
Four of the teenagers arrested last month — Mr. Murray, 14; Mr. Philips, 15
; Travis Beckford, 17; and Mr. Brown, 18 — were released after prosecutors
did not file indictments within six days of their arrests, as would have
been required to keep them detained pending a trial. Shaquell Cooper, 15,
who was also charged in the case, is currently being held in jail on assault
charges stemming from an episode in October 2015, officials said.
Despite the fear stoked by the initial reports, or the relief that followed
the arrests, the case was always complicated. Moments after the mayor said
the public should have been alerted more quickly, Robert K. Boyce, the
Police Department’s chief of detectives, illustrated just how tangled the
case was already becoming.
Detectives, Chief Boyce acknowledged, were investigating claims that the
woman was having sex with her father when the five suspects encountered them.
Both eventually admitted to investigators that they had been engaged in
sexual relations in the playground, the officials said.
A rape test performed on the woman showed the presence of DNA from two of
the five suspects, including one who the woman had repeatedly insisted had
not had sexual contact with her, the officials said.
The two cellphone videos, showing brief verbal exchanges between the woman
and the teenagers before the encounter — together with messages that at
least one of the suspects sent out on social media — depicted what
investigators saw as evidence of a consensual encounter.
In his social media messages, one teenager expressed worry about what his
parents would think, the officials said, and about how to characterize what
had occurred.
Prosecutors investigated the allegations for nearly seven weeks. They also
worked to piece together details of the woman’s life, with some help from
her, her father and others.
She was taken from her mother, a drug user, at 2 and placed in the care of a
local family, who later moved to California. The woman was eventually
removed from that family, the officials said. Afterward, she had lived in a
series of group homes and other facilities. Investigators learned she had a
history of emotional troubles, the officials said.
When she turned 18, the woman, whose mother had died, learned her biological
father’s identity and contacted him through Facebook, the officials said.
Last July, she came to New York to meet him.
Besides the statements the woman made to the police and others, she also met
three times with prosecutors in their offices in Downtown Brooklyn. When
she was interviewed, it was outside the presence of her father, the
officials said. Prosecutors treated the case with sensitivity, the officials
said. Experienced sex-crimes investigators spoke with her. Counselors and
social workers were available to assist her.
But in the last of those interviews, on Feb. 18, the woman told prosecutors
she was unwilling to go forward with the case. She portrayed all of what had
happened in Osborn Playground as a result of her consensual actions —
saying she did not stop the suspects from advancing. At one point, she told
investigators she “doesn’t do” court, the officials said. At another, she
said she could not explain why she made conflicting statements in the past.
“She didn’t want to testify,” one of the officials said. “She didn’t
want to bring the case. She expressed a complete unwillingness to cooperate
in any criminal prosecution.”
Aside from her lack of cooperation, considered vital to most sex-crimes
inquiries, the prosecutors have no evidence that the woman resisted sexual
contact.
Although the woman said she had been drunk, along with her father, her blood
was not drawn in the hospital that night, so her blood-alcohol content is
not known.
The woman had no injuries consistent with being raped, only a wound on her
knee that officials said she sustained when she fell while running from
officers who responded.
“It is my fervent hope that this young woman gets all the support that she
needs going forward,” Mr. Thompson said in his statement. “My office,
including our victim advocates who have been working with this young woman,
stand ready to provide her with any assistance she may need.” |
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