Last summer was a bad one for Oklahoma law enforcement. At least three officers from differentbranches of law enforcement were accused of sex crimes.
Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma City police officer, was accused of sexually assaulting at least 13 womenwhile on duty. Last month, he pleaded not guilty to the 36 criminal counts against him.
Former Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Eric Roberts has pleaded not guilty to several charges againsthim after he was accused of raping or sexually assaulting three women during traffic stops. Chargesinclude sexual battery, soliciting an act of lewdness or prostitution, embezzlement, rape byinstrumentation, forcible sodomy, soliciting a bribe, second degree rape, and procuring indecentexposure.
The third law enforcement officer, a former Tulsa County Sheriff's deputy accused of sexual batterypleaded not guilty to the charges against him and was bound over for trial. Gerald Nuckolls, 26, ischarged with two counts each of sexual battery and indecent exposure involving the alleged assaults oftwo women while he was on duty. Charges of sexual battery and outraging public decency involving athird woman were dismissed when she failed to appear in court.
In the cases of all three men, one woman came forward to accuse the officer, and her allegations ledother alleged victims to come forward with sexual assault complaints.
In Nuckolls's case, a woman reported that the deputy came to her home insisting that drugs were on theproperty. She said she consented to a search because "he was going to do what he wanted to do atthat time or take [her] to jail." When the deputy said he was going to search a barn on the property, thewoman followed him, believing that he would plant drugs if not supervised.
Instead, she says, he exposed himself to her and pulled down her top, making inappropriate comments.
After reports surfaced regarding Nuckolls's arrest following the alleged incident, another woman cameforward to say that the deputy exposed himself to her and told her to touch his erect penis during a publicintoxication call. That woman testified that she did not come forward after her alleged run-in with thedeputy because she did not think anyone would believe her. She told the court, "It would have been myword against his."
Sexual battery charges can be tricky. The statute against sexual battery is vague in its definition of theoffense, which allows prosecutors to easily file charges. Sexual battery is defined in the same statute aslewd or indecent acts or proposals to a child under 16 (21 O.S. § 1123). Subsection B defines sexualbattery as follows:
. . .[T]he intentional touching, mauling or feeling of the body or private parts of any person sixteen(16) years of age or older, in a lewd and lascivious manner:
- Without the consent of that person;
- When committed by a state, county, municipal or political subdivision employee or a contractor oran employee of a contractor of the state, a county, a municipality or political subdivision of thisstate upon a person who is under the legal custody, supervision or authority of a state agency, acounty, a municipality or a political subdivision of this state; or
- When committed upon a person who is at least sixteen (16) years of age and is less than twenty(20) years of age and is a student, or in the legal custody or supervision of any public or privateelementary or secondary school, or technology center school, by a person who is eighteen (18)years of age or older and is an employee of the same school system that the victim attends.
In order to obtain a sexual battery conviction, the district attorney must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the contact was made without the consent of the accuser (or that the accuser was statutorily unable to consent) and that the physical contact was sexual in nature. A defense lawyer must work to challenge evidence of lewd and lascivious intent.
