Sex and Sexuality
Hodari Lewis of Detroit was just 20 when he met a teenage girl at Eastland mall late in 2005.
The girl, 15 at the time, testified that she lied twice that day, insisting that she was 17 when the off-duty officer asked her age. When Lewis asked to see identification documenting her birth date, both parties acknowledge she said she'd lost it the previous week.
They agreed to a first date one week later. Lewis, again off-duty, picked the teenager up at a public library after school. Twenty minutes later, a Grosse Pointe Park police officer was startled to find the couple parked on a residential street and engaged in an act that does not typically take place there, at least in broad daylight.
In the awkward confrontation that ensued, the Grosse Pointe Park cop determined that the teenager was still several months shy of the age of consent and arrested Lewis on charges of criminal sexual conduct and carrying a firearm (his service revolver) during the commission of a felony. Soon after, a district court judge bound him over for trial before Judge Deborah Thomas.
The teenager's admission that she had initiated the sexual act did little to mitigate Lewis' plight, since she was incapable (as a matter of law) of consenting to any such act.
So Lewis' lawyer took a different tack. An act of sexual assault may indeed have taken place, attorney Randall Upshaw conceded. But his client had been the victim, not the perpetrator.
Thomas was sympathetic. When prosecutors objected that Lewis had done nothing to resist his consort's advances, the judge noted that Michigan courts had long held that a woman need not resist to be considered a victim of sexual assault -- and that the same standard should be applied to Lewis.
Thomas, who recused herself from Lewis' case after the appeals court reversed her, continues to regard the defendant as more sinned against than sinning. She rejects the state's position that "it is perfectly permissible for complainant to lie, defraud and assault another person so long as she is under the age of 17."
Prosecutors respond only that the law holds Lewis and the girl to different standards -- and that jurors can decide, when the case goes to trial later this year, who victimized whom.
This is cache, read story here
The girl, 15 at the time, testified that she lied twice that day, insisting that she was 17 when the off-duty officer asked her age. When Lewis asked to see identification documenting her birth date, both parties acknowledge she said she'd lost it the previous week.
They agreed to a first date one week later. Lewis, again off-duty, picked the teenager up at a public library after school. Twenty minutes later, a Grosse Pointe Park police officer was startled to find the couple parked on a residential street and engaged in an act that does not typically take place there, at least in broad daylight.
In the awkward confrontation that ensued, the Grosse Pointe Park cop determined that the teenager was still several months shy of the age of consent and arrested Lewis on charges of criminal sexual conduct and carrying a firearm (his service revolver) during the commission of a felony. Soon after, a district court judge bound him over for trial before Judge Deborah Thomas.
The teenager's admission that she had initiated the sexual act did little to mitigate Lewis' plight, since she was incapable (as a matter of law) of consenting to any such act.
So Lewis' lawyer took a different tack. An act of sexual assault may indeed have taken place, attorney Randall Upshaw conceded. But his client had been the victim, not the perpetrator.
Thomas was sympathetic. When prosecutors objected that Lewis had done nothing to resist his consort's advances, the judge noted that Michigan courts had long held that a woman need not resist to be considered a victim of sexual assault -- and that the same standard should be applied to Lewis.
Thomas, who recused herself from Lewis' case after the appeals court reversed her, continues to regard the defendant as more sinned against than sinning. She rejects the state's position that "it is perfectly permissible for complainant to lie, defraud and assault another person so long as she is under the age of 17."
Prosecutors respond only that the law holds Lewis and the girl to different standards -- and that jurors can decide, when the case goes to trial later this year, who victimized whom.
This is cache, read story here
