Girl who killed accused rapist must pay his family $150,000 (1 Viewer)

[baarbogast]

Broader question
Say you were falsely convicted and had a 10 yr sentence
Then say you tried to escape or some similar action that added time to your sentence
Then there’s an appeal where it’s discovered you are falsely imprisoned and you sentence is vacated
Do you still have to do the added time- esp considering you should not have been there in the first place?

MrBallen has a story of basically that exact scenario.

 

[tenordas]

This story makes me so mad

And how is this guy still free??

Surely his life couldn’t withstand any finetooth comb investigation about any number of crimes
=====================
Few cases shine a light on systemic failures to protect vulnerable people in the US more than that of Pieper Lewis. The 18-year-old will face a probation violation hearing this week after walking out of a women’s residential facility and cutting off her electronic ankle tag.

Her attorneys are still seeking to delay her sentencing while they seek an updated psychological evaluation to present to the judge.

Lewis’s is a sad tale of compounded abuse. She entered the foster care system as a baby and was adopted at the age of 3; she says she ran away at 15 because her home life with her adoptive parents had become volatile and abusive. She ended up being sex trafficked by a man she met while she was on the street.

The man who trafficked her would ply her with alcohol and take her to meet associates, who would pay to rape her while she was either conscious or passed out.

One of those men, 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, allegedly raped Lewis on multiple occasions. She says that she woke up during one such assault in 2020, grabbed the knife off Brooks’s nightstand and stabbed him to death.

It is generally accepted that the story Pieper Lewis tells about that night is true. During her trial for killing Brooks, prosecutors accepted that she had been sex trafficked and recommended that she be spared the 20 years in prison she faced.

A report by the Des Moines Register found police had never investigated the sex trafficking allegations, and to this day, the person she says trafficked her remains a free man.

By the time Lewis met him, she was already vulnerable. She had tried to leave home before, during which time she stayed at a hostel for at-risk youth and was sexually assaulted.

Lewis was spared a federal prison sentence by the judge who heard her original case and was instead put on five years’ probation, given 200 hours’ community service, and ordered to live at the Des Moines Fresh Start Women’s Center after she pleaded guilty to willful injury and voluntary manslaughter.

It was that residential centre that she absconded from in November. Now 18, she faces sentencing for her escape — and the possibility of further prison time, plus a fine……

Lewis’s case is not an isolated one. A number of young women have been prosecuted for attacking or killing their rapists and traffickers over the past decade.

In 2019, Cyntoia Brown-Long was released from prison after serving 15 years — half her life — after being convicted of murdering her rapist. Brown-Long had been sold into sex slavery when she was 16 years old, and she shot and killed a man who she said was raping her for money before fleeing with his wallet and two guns.

Prosecutors called her a “child prostitute” and “opportunistic”, and she was sentenced to life behind bars. In the state of Tennessee, that meant she could be “considered” for release after 51 years. Indeed, the fact that she only served 15 years is somewhat of a miracle……

Convicted of killing her rapist, Pieper Lewis faces further sentencing

The teenage victim of trafficking has violated her parole, leading to a further hearing this week. Meanwhile, the man she says trafficked her has still not been charged. Holly Baxter reports

www.independent.co.uk

If her story of being sex trafficked was accepted as true by the court, how was that guy not arrested immediately? They already had one witness, finding another probably would have been easy enough. That makes no sense. What is our legal system doing?

 

[Sailorsaint]

If her story of being sex trafficked was accepted as true by the court, how was that guy not arrested immediately? They already had one witness, finding another probably would have been easy enough. That makes no sense. What is our legal system doing?

Unfortunately the phrase, "Justice is blind" is often more than a metaphor.

 

[Optimus Prime]

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A teenage sex trafficking victim who fatally stabbed the man she accused of abusing her was resentenced Wednesday to probation, telling an Iowa judge that she now has a support system to help keep her on track.

Prosecutors agreed that Pieper Lewis should continue her probation rather than be incarcerated. Polk County Attorney Kimberly Graham told the judge that her office “sees her as a human being,” that she is vulnerable to revictimization and that there is low risk she will commit more violence.

Lewis, now 18, had faced a 20-year prison sentence for the June 2020 fatal stabbing of 37-year-old Zachary Brooks, who Lewis said she was trafficked to against her will and forced to have sex with multiple times at age 15. She pleaded guilty in September to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury and was sentenced to probation.

Polk County Judge David Porter ruled then that Lewis’charges would have been expunged from her record had she kept to the terms of her probation. That decision was revoked Wednesday.

“I indicated to you last year you’ve asked for a second chance, you don’t get a third. I stand by that,” Porter said to Lewis. “There are consequences for your actions. You have now been convicted of two felony offenses.”………

Iowa judge orders continued probation for teen sex trafficking victim who killed her alleged abuser

A teenage sex trafficking victim who fatally stabbed the man she accused of abusing her was resentenced Wednesday to probation, telling an Iowa judge that she now has a support system to help keep her on track. Prosecutors agreed that Pieper Lewis should continue her probation rather than be...

apnews.com

 

[SystemShock]

A similar case happened in MX. A young woman who killed her rapist got 6 years (there is no probation in MX) for what amounts to 1st degree murder and ordered to pay the family of the rapist some $16K+ dollars. The MX court (no jury of your peers) determined she used excessive lethal force in defending herself even if she feared for her life (and there is context to this): she hit the rapist in the head, tried to escape the site, she couldn't, the dude started to wake up, she panicked and stabbed him, then stabbed him some more, then carried the body to the street.

She spent 9 months in jail, but once the news got out, there were large protests, there may have been some threats, and the MX SC finally reversed the ruling.