Thursday, April 19, 2012

Can’t a ho change her ways?

Thew Huff Post reports:
The Brooklyn DA's office sat on a rape recantation for nearly a year while two men accused of the crime sat behind bars, documents reveal.

Last June, Damien Crooks and Jamali Brockett were arrested for forcing a 13-year-old Jewish Orthodox girl into prostitution in 2003, and then raping, assaulting and sexually trafficking her for the next 8 years.

Two other men, Jawara Brockett and Darrell Dula, were also arrested and charged with raping the girl.

A day after accusing Jawara Brockett and Dula, however, the girl, then 22-years-old, went back to the police, and told detectives she was simply a prostitute for 5 years and made up the allegations against Brockett and Dula.

From The New York Daily News:
“I once again asked [her] if she was raped,” a detective wrote in a police report after the interview. “She told me ‘no’ and stated to me, ‘Can’t a ho change her ways?’ ”

The woman also signed a recantation, but the case proceeded and in spring 2011, a grand jury voted to indict Dula, Crooks and two others who were allegedly part of the crew.
Defense attorneys for the men didn't receive the woman's recantation until April 2012, when prosecutor Rebecca Gingold, who replaced Assistant District Attorney Abbie Greenberger, discovered the documents and turned them over.
Apparently a ho can change, drop a false accusation, and not suffer any consequences.

The real criminals here are the prosecutors like Abbie Greenberger. The ho only maintained a false accusation for a day. The DA maintained a false accusation for a year.

Update: A reader says that Greenberger was a scapegoat, according to this
NY Daily News story:
Greenberger said she found inconsistencies in the 22-year-old accuser’s account, but couldn’t convince her boss there was a problem.

“When I brought the inconsistencies to Lauren Hersh (chief of the sex-trafficking unit at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office), I was told that I didn’t do my job right and that I’m trying to dismiss the case and that I should work harder,” Greenberger told the Daily News.
I think that the problem is systemic. They should not be holding an accused man in jail unless there is some corroborating evidence. His freedom should not depend on some boss telling someone to "work harder". He should have seen a judge the next day, and judge should have released him for lack of evidence.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ADA Greenberger is being used as a scapegoat. The case was not originally hers and she had nothing to do with indicting it. When she went to her bureau chief with doubts about the case she was scolded for trying to get the case dismissed and told to "work harder." (see Daily News today) The report of the recantation was not in the file when it was transferred to ADA Greenberger just a few months ago. Greenberger left the DA's office because the place is a disaster, not because of this case.