XPost: talk.politics.guns, memphis.general, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.abortion, sac.politics   
   From: kamala.harris.failed@san.francisco   
      
   Shawana Hall ran across two lanes of the empty highway and through the   
   rain-soaked grass in the median.   
      
   She ran across two more lanes and toward a fence. Fleeing through the western   
   part of Kalamazoo, she spotted the police car, a laptop screen illuminating   
   the vehicle, so she kept going. Over the fence, through a parking lot. She   
   sprinted up to the patrol    
   car, beat on the window and said she’d been raped.   
      
   The man had a knife and struck her in the face, she told the officer. She met   
   her attacker that night, but didn’t know his name.   
      
   The officer gave Shawana a number to call if she wanted police to pursue the   
   case and then took her to a nurse trained in collecting information and   
   evidence, including swabs and samples, they hoped might identify her rapist.   
   The process took hours. She    
   left alone and in different clothes when the exam was over, having never   
   spoken with police again.   
      
   Eight months later, in December 2008, DNA evidence identified a suspect:   
   Calvin Kelly, a Memphis man who spent decades as a truck driver and traveled   
   all over the country.   
      
   Shawana wasn’t the first woman whose rape led police to Kelly. Marie, a St.   
   Louis woman, said he raped her in the back of his truck the year before. And   
   Shawana wasn’t the last. A woman in Virginia the following year told police   
   she was raped, the    
   investigation once again leading police to Kelly. Three women in three states   
   in three consecutive years.   
      
   Kelly maintains his innocence. He never raped anyone, he’s said, and these   
   women lied to settle a grudge.   
      
   Yet a look at these women reveals something else. Kelly’s victims were poor,   
   black and vulnerable, characteristics that make them more likely to be raped   
   and less likely to be believed. Almost all the investigations ended without   
   charges, the most    
   common outcome when a rape is reported. Indeed, less than one percent of rapes   
   end with a rapist in jail.   
      
   "These are challenging, but also simple cases," said Angela Povilaitis, an   
   experienced sex crimes prosecutor who at the same time led the prosecutions of   
   Kelly and disgraced former doctor Larry Nassar.   
      
   "It really comes down to do you believe his version or do you believe the   
   victim’s version."   
      
   Kelly’s case went to trial in September 2017. After six days of testimony   
   – including from Shawana and Marie and the woman from Virginia – and a day   
   of deliberation, Povilaitis found herself waiting for the verdict as confident   
   as she’d ever been    
   as prosecutor. The jury, however, found Kelly not guilty.   
      
   But that isn’t the whole story. And that isn’t the end of the story.   
      
   Falsely accused or serial rapist?   
   What Povilaitis knew and couldn’t tell the Kalamazoo County jury was that it   
   wasn’t just three women in three states in three years.   
      
   It was 11 women in four states over the course of three decades who told   
   police that they’d been raped with the ensuing investigations leading to   
   Kelly.   
      
   So Kelly is either a man who has repeatedly been falsely accused, or Kelly is   
   a serial rapist.   
      
   The first known rape report police connected to Kelly is from Memphis in 1985,   
   when a small, red sports car pulled up alongside a woman walking down the   
   street.   
      
   The driver offered a ride, and she accepted. Once inside the car, he hit her   
   in the chest and pulled out a gun. He drove her to a lot behind a school and   
   raped her twice. The woman picked Kelly out of a photo lineup, but by the time   
   police went for their    
   warrant, Kelly had moved to St. Louis and an extradition effort failed.   
      
   Two years later, in May 1987, a woman told St. Louis police that a man raped   
   her in her home. DNA evidence eventually linked the case to Kelly, but not   
   until 2015.   
      
   In November 1987, a woman told police she was standing near an intersection in   
   the rain when a man drove up and asked if she wanted a ride. She said yes, and   
   he drove her to an alley, pulled out a knife and raped her.   
      
      
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