XPost: talk.politics.guns, memphis.general, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   From: kamala.harris.encourages@black.crime   
      
   https://fox17.com/resources/media2/16x9/full/768/center/80/e7e4c   
   34-86e0-4ce9-b404-a4eaf98380e9-medium16x9_AP24138583064040.jpg   
   Cleotha Abston walks from the witness stand to his seat in a courtroom during   
   his sentencing hearing for an April rape conviction on Friday, May 17, 2024,   
   in Memphis, Tenn. Abston received 80 years in prison for kidnapping and raping   
   a woman in September    
   2021, a year before he was charged with killing a Memphis school teacher. (AP   
   Photo/Adrian Sainz)   
      
   MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee man was sentenced to 80 years in prison Friday   
   for raping a woman a year before he was charged with kidnapping and killing a   
   school teacher who was on an early morning run.   
      
   Cleotha Abston, whose history of criminal charges dates back to the 1990s when   
   he was a juvenile, received 40 years in prison for aggravated rape, 20 years   
   for aggravated kidnapping and another 20 years for being a felon in possession   
   of a weapon. The    
   sentences will run consecutively, or one after the other, Shelby County   
   Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee ruled.   
      
   Abston, 40, was convicted April 12 of raping a woman while holding her at   
   gunpoint in September 2021. The victim said she had been raped after meeting   
   Abston on a social dating site and agreeing to meet him at his apartment. A   
   jury found Abston covered    
   the woman's face with a T-shirt, walked her outside the apartment and raped   
   her in the backseat of his girlfriend’s vehicle.   
      
   Coffee said Abston treated the victim with “exceptional cruelty.”   
      
   Abston waived a sentencing hearing in which witnesses could have testified for   
   or against him. His lawyer, Juni Ganguli, said waiving a sentencing hearing   
   meant they were able to avoid a “circus” in court. Prosecutor Paul   
   Hagerman said Abston    
   received what is “effectively a life sentence.”   
      
   Ganguli said he plans to appeal the conviction and he will file a motion for a   
   new trial.   
      
   “We had a strong defense,” Ganguli told reporters outside court Friday.   
   “I do not believe for a second that he raped or kidnapped or had a gun, that   
   he put a gun to that woman."   
   Abston was not charged in the 2021 rape case until after being charged with   
   snatching Eliza Fletcher from a street while she was jogging before dawn near   
   the University of Memphis on Sept. 2, 2022, and forcing her into an SUV. Her   
   body was found days    
   later near a vacant duplex.   
      
   Abston was not arrested on the rape charges before Fletcher’s killing   
   because of a long delay in processing the sexual assault kit, authorities have   
   said. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say they will pursue the death   
   penalty if Abston is    
   convicted of first-degree murder in Fletcher's death. No trial date has been   
   set in that case.   
      
   The killing of Fletcher, a 34-year-old kindergarten teacher and mother of two,   
   shocked the Memphis community and led to a flood of support for her family.   
   Runners in Memphis and several other cities held an early-morning running   
   events in her honor a    
   week after she was abducted. A second run honoring Fletcher was held last year.   
      
   Abston, who also has gone by the name Cleotha Henderson, was arrested after   
   police detected his DNA on sandals found near the location where Fletcher was   
   last seen, an arrest affidavit said. An autopsy report showed Fletcher died of   
   a gunshot wound to    
   the head. She also had injuries to her right leg and jaw fractures.   
      
   After Fletcher’s death, the Legislature passed a law requiring the Tennessee   
   Bureau of Investigation to issue a quarterly report on sexual assault kit   
   testing times.   
      
   The rape victim in the 2021 case sued the city of Memphis on allegations that   
   the Memphis Police Department did not properly investigate her case, but the   
   lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.   
      
      
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