Daniel Holtzclaw
He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, and other sex offenses while on duty as an Oklahoma City Police Officer.
According to the police investigators, Holtzclaw abused his position as an officer by running background checks to find information that could be used to coerce victims into sex.
[21] Holtzclaw was accused of sexually assaulting multiple African American women over the period between December 2013 and June 2014, targeting those from a poorer, majority black portion of the city.
According to police investigators, Holtzclaw ran background checks on women with outstanding warrants or other criminal records, and methodically targeted those victims.
When Holtzclaw reported to the OKCPD Springlake Division station the following afternoon for his daily 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift, he was pulled aside and driven to the department's Sex Crimes Unit by detectives Kim Davis and Rocky Gregory for questioning.
After being Mirandized, Holtzclaw underwent a two-hour interrogation during which he denied all accusations of misconduct during the Ligons stop earlier that morning, and buccal swabs were taken for DNA comparison.
While he was released after the interrogation, Holtzclaw's commission and entry cards, uniform shirt and pants, badges, firearms (handgun and shotgun), radio, and keys to his assigned police vehicle were seized, and he was placed on indefinite paid administrative leave.
[23][24][25][26] While reviewing Ligons' case, the two sex-crimes detectives remembered a previous report of forced oral sex committed by a police officer.
Looking back through police records, the detectives found the report of a woman who said she was stopped in May 2014 and driven to an isolated area by an officer who forced her to perform oral sex.
The detectives then reviewed Holtzclaw's automatically recorded history of running names through the department's two databases, looking specifically for people who had been checked out multiple times, and they contacted those women.
In the initial investigation, six women were willing to come forward to testify, and the GPS device on Holtzclaw's patrol car put him at the scene of the alleged incidents.
[21][34][35][36] In court, prosecutors produced DNA evidence that was found on a triangle-shaped spot on the inside of Holtzclaw's uniform trousers, close to the zipper.
The defense concentrated on the accusers' lifestyles, calling just one witness, a former girlfriend of Holtzclaw's, who testified that he never exhibited sexually aggressive or inappropriate behavior around her.
[7] Charges included first-degree rape, sexual battery, indecent exposure, stalking, forcible oral sodomy and burglary.
[8] A statement released by Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty reads, in part: "We are satisfied with the jury's decision and firmly believe justice was served.
The ruling, written by Judge Dana Kuehn, rejected the appellant attorneys' claims of insufficient evidence and of improper procedure for bundling all 36 charges together.
[2] Racial justice activists who had been very vocal about recent police-involved shootings were also accused of being largely absent from involvement in the Holtzclaw case.
This verdict and Holtzclaw's forthcoming sentencing are entry points for a more thoughtful, humane, and transformative national dialogue about police brutality and sexual violence.
SB Nation subsequently suspended and later permanently shut down its long-form journalism program and cut ties with the freelance author responsible.
[60] Jason Flom, a founding board member of the Innocence Project, dedicated a 2019 episode of his Wrongful Conviction podcast to interviews with Holtzclaw, his sister and a biologist who claims to have detected errors with the prosecution of the case.
