The Allegation the State Didn’t Charge
The State told the jury that its patrol-car records verified its accusers. One woman’s account fit the records better than most, in the detectives’ own files and the lieutenant’s own words. The State never charged Daniel with her allegation. The reason it gave was one it did not apply to the allegations it took to trial. She was never a witness, so this page calls her S.G. The department called her Victim #14.
“FIND HER.”
On November 4, 2014, S.G. saw Daniel on the television news. She phoned the Springlake station the next morning and said she had seen the officer who came to her apartment. Her call went up the chain within the hour, from a station employee to a major, from the major to the captain over investigations, and from the captain to the Sex Crimes lieutenant. The lieutenant forwarded it to the department’s crime analyst that afternoon with two words in large type: FIND HER.
OKC 2622 (Nov. 5, 2014); Scott Adams 02762.
Detectives Kim Davis and Valeri Homan interviewed her at home on November 6. She said that on an afternoon about four months earlier an officer had stopped her outside her apartment complex, run a false name she gave him, driven her to the apartment to get her identification, followed her inside, and touched her over her clothing. Scott Adams 02753–56.
That evening the lieutenant reported the result to his captain, copying a major and the Deputy Chief of Investigations. The email begins Victim #14
:
The records fit her account better than they fit most of the thirteen.
She did not know the date. Police found it the way they found the others, in Daniel’s own records. On June 9, 2014, at 5:26 p.m., he had run through Varuna the exact false name she said she gave him, from the state she said she had claimed to be from. The Crime Information Unit log shows the same check minutes later. His activity card put him out on subject
and on a walk-thru
at the cross street of her complex from 5:15 to 6:00. The AVL showed his car at zero speed where she said he stopped her, then again at the apartment. Scott Adams 02764–65.
Detective Davis, under oath four years later: Everything she told me matched up crime information, AVL and all of that.
Davis Dep. 55:17–19 (Jan. 29, 2019).
The State took the first answer and closed the file.
Before she went to police, S.G. had visited a lawyer. He pulled up Daniel’s photograph from a news website and showed it to her, and she told him that was not the officer. He told her to come back if she found out who it was. The file records no lineup; the only one in it is the Springlake shift roster for June 9. By the time she spoke to detectives, she said it was the officer she had seen on television. Scott Adams 02754, 02761, 02764.
The District Attorney’s office declined to charge Daniel. Detective Davis explained why:
The records had verified her as fully as they verified anyone. What the State required of her was an identification.
The test the State did not apply to the allegations it took to trial.
Sherry Ellis told Detective Davis she thought the man was Black. Asked at the preliminary hearing whether she could identify him, she answered, No. Because it was dark.
Prelim. Hr’g Tr. Vol. I 294:14–24, 295:5–18 (Nov. 17, 2014).
The patrol-car data gave her account three minutes and forty-nine seconds, from the last reading in the cul-de-sac to the next one on Miramar, about 500 feet away by the defense’s measurement. In that window Daniel had to drive over the curb and across the field to the back of the school, stop, get out, open her door, commit an assault she said lasted five to ten minutes, get back in and drive out to the street. Davis’s answer was that four minutes is plenty of time.
The jury convicted on all four of her counts. Trial Tr. 2989:23–2993:8; Trial Tr. 3007:23–25; Trial Tr. 3101:12–13; Trial Tr. 3118:21–3123:2.
Terri Morris gave dates that matched no stop by Daniel and a description that police checked against a different officer. The State charged Daniel on her allegation anyway. The jury acquitted. Trial Tr. 3265:14–3267:2; Gregory Dep. 191:15–192:17 (Jan. 17, 2019).
After the news hit.
S.G. was one of several women who contacted police after Daniel’s arrest was on the news. Two of them, Kala Lyles and Shardayreon Hill, became part of the thirteen accusers whose allegations the State took to trial. Lyles contacted police after seeing the coverage. Shardayreon Hill’s mother told Detective Davis that she had urged her daughter to come forward: Later on the news hit.
The State charged Daniel on both women’s allegations and took them to trial. The jury acquitted on every count involving them. Scott Adams 00628; Judgment and Sentence, Jan. 21, 2016.
The records could not tell the State whether to believe her. They could not tell the jury either.
The file lists one suspect, Daniel, and ends with the declination. It records no effort to find out who, if not Daniel, came to her apartment. Scott Adams 02753, 02936.
That leaves two possibilities, and both end in the same place. If the State believed her account but doubted her identification, then an officer had run her name, walked through her complex and followed her upstairs, and the department let it go. If the State did not believe her account, then the records that fit it so closely had verified nothing, and the same records could not verify the thirteen either. Either way, the “corroboration” the prosecutor called independent was the fact that Daniel ran a name. Running a name was part of every stop he made on duty.
Explore the rest of the case.
Daniel Holtzclaw: case summary
A summary of the whole case: the investigation, the DNA, the accusers, the trial, and where things stand.
The DNAHow the State Distorted the DNA Evidence
A trace of DNA, less than a car door handle leaves, and no stain. The prosecutor called it “fact” that it came from a rape.
The analystThe Analyst In Her Own Words
The State’s only forensic witness, on video: what she looked for, what she didn’t test, what she told the prosecutor, and what her opinions rested on.
The emailsEvidence Destruction
The analyst’s email account was deleted while the appeal was pending. What the State later recovered began after the trial was over.
The searchHow the State Manufactured Accusers
Nine of thirteen accusers were found by police, who opened with a “tip” that didn’t exist. Thirty-some other women said nothing happened.
Accuser evidenceWhat Police Never Checked
Missing recordings and what the objective records actually showed, once each woman had made her allegation.
Case studyTerri Morris
How Morris's allegation changed, how police selected May 8, and what the AVL records do and do not show.
The first accuserJannie Ligons
The June 18 allegation, the unrecorded first interview, and the negative forensic test results.
Case studyKala Lyles
Twenty or thirty minutes through the fly, hours before the pants were seized. Her DNA wasn’t there, and the patrol car’s records leave about eleven minutes.
The fly“I Don’t Know How He Did It.”
Jannie Ligons said it at trial. Eight of the nine women who alleged rape or oral sodomy placed the act through the fly of pants that stayed on. Under the uniform, Daniel wore compression shorts with no fly. Getting past them would take work. Nobody has ever explained how he was able to extricate himself with so little time and effort.
Guilt by associationOne Accuser’s DNA Carried Twelve Others
The only physical evidence belonged to one accuser. All thirteen were tried together, and jurors later said the DNA got deliberations moving when they doubted some of the others.
The courtroomThe Circus-Like Trial
The protests, audible chanting, courthouse conditions, and the denied request to sequester the jury.
The manWho Daniel Was
A rookie his supervisors called eager and liked by all, whose phone and work computer held nothing incriminating, and who sat for two hours with the detectives accusing him and urged them to test his DNA.
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