Client Finds Peace After Rape, Sodomy Charges Reduced

WILLIAM B.
William came to me, and he was charged with first degree rape. He was accused of this during a time that his wife was out of town. His wife's best friend came over to the house after he and she had been texting and accused him of having raped her. That he forcibly raped her. That she did not consent, that she did not want to have sex. But that they drank alcohol and that he then forced her to have sexual intercourse with her.
Of course, when William came to me, he was terrified. He'd just had to post a huge bond, and he had just found out now that he's looking at up to life in prison. He didn't know what to do, or where to go. So, I sat down with William, and we went through the details of the allegation in excruciating detail. William walked out of that initial meeting with a plan about how we were going to defend the case.
We ordered up the police reports, and we sat down, we went through those together. Spent a significant amount of time working through that. Then went and put on the preliminary hearing. The course of the preliminary hearing, as it is in a lot of prelims that I've put on, was to develop every single fact that we could possible develop in the case. The purpose is so there was no way that they could later squirm out or change the story on us. We had to know exactly what this witness was going to say at trial, and to every critical question and point in the case.
In addition to doing this and shoring up all of those facts we challenged the evidence and credibility of the witness. We don't always do that, but in this case, we did, because we didn't believe, I didn't believe the accuser. So, we took it a step further. At this point we're doing more than just building our case for trial. We are attempting to educate the judge, and we are attempting to educate the prosecutor about the fallacy of their chance of success at trial.
I wanted them to see how their witness would perform under the stresses of cross examination. She didn't fare well. As a matter of fact, before the preliminary hearing started, the recommendation was 15 years in prison. After the preliminary hearing was over with, the prosecutor wanted to start having a conversation about what it would take to resolve the case.
So in the months that followed, we set the case for trial, continued to work and develop the facts of the case, and refine the defense. In the end, we worked out a plea deal, that my client could not refuse. We were able to get all of the heinous charges dismissed, the rape, the sodomy, and the sexual battery. All of those were gone. We got the case reduced down to incident exposure, a level one offense, that allows him to apply to have his name removed from the registry after 10 years, and straight probation.
The client did not do a single day in prison. His wife, the one who was gone when all this happened, is still with him, happily married. As a matter of fact, they've just moved into a new home, right here in Broken Arrow. That's a happy client.

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