XPost: talk.politics.guns, neworleans.general, alt.abortion   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: noreply@mixmin.net   
      
   https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/theadvocate.com/con   
   ent/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/5/c3/5c33054e-2f1c-11e9-9a72-971cf   
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   Sherman Hampton   
      
   She walked to the witness stand with a prosecutor’s hand guiding the way —   
   a much older woman than the 29-year-old who reported a rape to police in June   
   1992.   
      
   Still, on Tuesday she said there were some things she could never forget: the   
   red shirt and jean miniskirt she wore as she waited for a bus near the former   
   St. Thomas housing development. The fear she felt when a man forced her into   
   an abandoned building,   
    bound her hands with duct tape and assaulted her. And the voices of the young   
   children playing outside who led her to safety.   
      
   “My life has been destroyed,” the woman said in a New Orleans courtroom.   
   “I waited too long to go through this.”   
      
   The woman was one of four to tell police that they were raped in horrific   
   encounters with a stranger who threatened their lives between 1992 and 2003.   
      
   Their cases went unsolved for years — and drew outright disbelief from   
   police in one instance — until DNA matches linked all four of the cases.   
   Arrest warrants for a man named Sherman Hampton were obtained in 2007 and   
   2008, and he was finally booked    
   into jail in 2013.   
      
   Hampton's long journey to trial was delayed in June 2014 after doctors   
   testified that he was mentally incompetent. He was found competent to proceed   
   in March 2015 and again at a hearing last week, court records show.   
      
   Almost 27 years after the first case listed in an indictment, Hampton went on   
   trial this week in Criminal District Judge Robin Pittman's courtroom. The   
   64-year-old faces an automatic life sentence if he is convicted on any of the   
   four first-degree rape    
   charges.   
      
   Assistant District Tiffany Tucker, the prosecutor who led the first accuser to   
   the stand, told jurors that the case against Hampton is built upon solid DNA   
   evidence.   
      
   The women from different parts of the city who never knew each other would now   
   unite to accuse one man, she said.   
      
   The first woman who testified Tuesday dabbed her eyes with tissues as she   
   recalled the attack. It has haunted her ever since, she said. She spent years   
   abusing drugs and still sleeps in a different room from her husband.   
      
   In addition to the woman who said she was raped near the St. Thomas   
   development, there was a second woman who said she was raped in the stairwell   
   of a building in the 2100 block of Third Street in May 1995, a third woman who   
   said she was raped in the    
   4200 block of Freret Street in April 2003, and a fourth woman who said she was   
   raped in her home in the 2100 block of South Liberty Street in May 2003.   
      
   “This is the person who did it,” Tucker said as she gestured to Hampton.   
   “We finally, finally are able to give the victims answers as to what   
   happened to them all those years ago.”   
      
   Three months after the last attack, Hampton was arrested on an unrelated   
   burglary charge. He pleaded guilty and received a 10-year sentence in 2004.   
      
   In his opening statement, defense attorney Greg Carter told the jury not to   
   jump to conclusions despite the DNA evidence.   
      
   “I know TV, movies, popular culture — they all tell you that DNA evidence   
   is infallible. ... That’s not correct. That’s not the truth,” he said.   
   “The truth is that that man is innocent, and he did not commit these   
   crimes.”   
      
   Carter said there are no independent witnesses who could describe the   
   attacker. Aside from the DNA collected during sexual assault examinations,   
   there also is no forensic evidence, he said.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
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