Whitewater Three
Jefferson
County, Wisconsin
Date of Alleged Crime: September 5, 1998
Jarrett M. Adams and Dimitri Henley, both blacks, were
convicted by an all white jury of sexually assaulting Shawn E. Stratton, a
white female student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. A
third black, Rovaughn Hill, was also charged in the assault, but his trial
ended in a hung jury. On the day of the alleged assault, Adams,
Henley, and Hill, were playing video games in a university dormitory room
with a student named Shawn Demain, whom they had met only that day. According to Heidi Sheets, Stratton's roommate, both she and Stratton
invited the three young men to their room four floors above.
On the way upstairs, Sheets stopped at another room. When she later arrived
at her own room, she found Stratton on a bed performing oral sex on one of
the men, while another was on the bed, and the third was on the floor with
his pants down. After seeing what was going on, Sheets stormed out of
the room, but Stratton followed her, asking, “Are you mad at me?” Sheets
called her “a slut.”
Stratton, however, denied that the three men had been invited upstairs. She denied having oral sex with them, saying the scene described by Sheets
was not as it appeared. Stratton said the three men suddenly appeared
behind her when she opened her door and they sexually assaulted her. On cross examination, Stratton admitted that she had said nothing to
indicate she was being assaulted either when Sheets came into the room or
when the two conferred in the hallway. Even after talking to Sheets in
the hallway, Stratton did not attempt to seek help or flee the building but
returned to her room where she had non-consensual intercourse with the three
men.
After the men left, Stratton called her boyfriend, Joshua Lodwick, and told
him she had been raped. She did not want him to come to her room, but
instead went to his room. Lodwick wanted her to go to a hospital and
call police, but she did not want to do that. The next day she changed her
mind and went to a hospital and on the day following that she went to the
police and reported she had been sexually assaulted.
In a police report, Demain, the student in whose room Stratton had met the
defendants, stated that he saw Stratton socializing with her alleged
assailants in the smoking area of the dormitory after the supposed gang rape
occurred. He also testified to this effect at Hill's trial in 2001,
which ended in a hung jury. It is not clear what subsequently happened
to Hill, but presumably he was acquitted at a new trial or charges against
him were dropped.
However, at the trial of Adams and Henley, defense counsel had failed to
locate Demain and call him as a witness. Perhaps as a result, the two
were convicted and each was sentenced to 28 years in prison. In 2006,
a federal judge overturned the convictions of Adams and Henley due to this
failure. Charges against Adams were dropped in 2007 and he was
released. Henley was released on $1000 bail in 2008, but as of last
notice the prosecution is appealing a judge's decision to give Henley a new
trial. [4/09]
________________________________
Reference: Center
on Wrongful Convictions
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
Wisconsin Cases, Fabricated
Rapes
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