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| Daniel Holtzclaw— Wrongfully Convicted Cop |
Holtzclaw was wrongfully convicted of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, and other sexual charges in 2015 and sentenced to 263 years in prison.
The NFL-sized, 6'1", 250-pound college linebacker (and College All Freshman, NFL prospect) was falsely described by his accusers as being a black man shorter than 5'9", and as a blond man by another.
Those false descriptions are close enough to take away an innocent man's life in Oklahoma City.
From an update from the innocent Daniel Holtzclaw:
From Daniel Holtzclaw's Family and Friends
PRESS RELEASE: Oklahoma City ignores Daniel Holtzclaw’s innocence by settling with nine accusers
Feb 17, 2023 — The family of wrongfully convicted police officer Daniel Holtzclaw shared the following PRESS RELEASE on Feb. 9, 2023, about a new injustice in Daniel’s case: the City of Oklahoma City has ignored Daniel’s innocence by agreeing to pay settlement money to 9 of his accusers, including 3 women whose allegations led to his full acquittal at the criminal trial.
Read the full press release below:
Feb. 9, 2023
DANIEL HOLTZCLAW: "Oklahoma City taxpayers should not have to pay settlement money to the accusers when the allegations against me are false and the city was released from the lawsuits."
SISTER JENNY HOLTZCLAW: "We will never stop fighting for Daniel because he is innocent. All Oklahomans need to be protected from the police and prosecutorial misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction."
Enid, OK – Oklahoma City’s settlement agreement on Feb. 7, 2023, to pay $18,500 each to nine women who wrongfully accused Daniel Holtzclaw of sexual assaults is an injustice against taxpayers and against Daniel.
The former police officer continues to fight his wrongful conviction from behind bars after being railroaded by the Oklahoma City Police Department eager to avoid unrest by targeting him following a contradiction-filled allegation during the tumultuous time of nationwide protests over police brutality in 2014.
Oklahoma City and its police department should be held accountable for encouraging and soliciting the accusers’ wrongful allegations against Daniel, leading to the conviction of an innocent officer and the wasted taxpayer dollars that the city is now using to pay the costs and attorney fees of women who were not sexually assaulted by Daniel.
This settlement agreement is not justice. Oklahoma City mounted a biased and flawed investigation that encouraged vulnerable Black women to wrongfully accuse Daniel, leaving possible true assailants on the streets. The prosecution then put an inept OCPD forensic analyst, Elaine Taylor, on the stand during the trial, where she testified falsely and beyond the realm of science about the forensic evidence in Daniel’s case, contributing to his wrongful convictions.
Oklahoma City should pay nothing to the accusers and their attorneys because the evidence supports Daniel’s innocence, the accusers dropped their lawsuits against Daniel, and the federal judge ruled in favor of the city and against the accusers in their lawsuits. Federal judge Joe Heaton stated in his Order that "there is no basis" for the plaintiffs’ claim that "the custom and practice of the City [...] reflects deliberate indifference to the rights of plaintiffs."
Even though Oklahoma City lacked a legal reason to settle with accusers, the city appears to have caved in – at taxpayers’ expense – to avoid a lengthy defense against the false allegations of the accusers and their attorneys targeting the city in appeals before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.
Instead of supporting false allegations through this settlement agreement, Oklahoma City and the plaintiffs’ attorneys should have upheld justice by holding OCPD accountable for its massive investigation flaws – including the decision to stop using photo lineups after one woman first picked another officer – that encouraged multiple women to wrongfully accuse an innocent Japanese-American police officer.
Oklahoma City’s settlement agreement is particularly unjust because the city is using taxpayers’ hard-earned money to pay three accusers – Shardayreon Hill, Kala Lyles, and Terri Morris – even though Daniel was entirely acquitted of their allegations in his criminal trial.
Accuser Hill alleged, after Daniel’s case was broadcast on the news, that she was sexually assaulted in a busy hospital room after Daniel helped save her life following a PCP overdose when she tried to destroy the evidence of her drug use.
Lyles, whose allegation was solicited by detectives, claimed she was raped for 25 minutes and then orally sodomized, an impossible accusation given that her alleged sexual assault overlapped with the time when Daniel was driving and stopped a swerving car driven by accuser Jannie Ligons on June 18, 2014.
Morris initially claimed, while under the influence of crack cocaine, that an unknown officer driving an older model cruiser had sexually assaulted her, but the date, location, and car did not match Daniel. Morris only changed her allegation to accuse Daniel while she was in jail after a detective told her the location where Daniel’s police records showed he had interacted with her.
Daniel was acquitted of all three women’s allegations, yet taxpayers are now paying $18,500 to each.
By agreeing to settlement terms, Oklahoma City is also ignoring the evidence that Daniel was wrongfully convicted of the allegations of the remaining six accusers in the settlement agreement, including Jannie Ligons and Tabitha Barnes.
Ligons claimed the officer who sexually assaulted her was blond, 5’9”, and had pock-marked skin, none of which matched Daniel, revealing that Ligons’ perceptions of events were drastically wrong. Additionally, Ligons’ SANE kit, obtained just two hours after she alleged she was orally sodomized by the officer at a busy intersection, revealed no DNA from Daniel – or from Kala Lyles who claimed she was raped just minutes before – in or around Ligons’ mouth.
Another false accuser being paid by Oklahoma City is Tabitha Barnes, who testified in a previously released deposition video, “He didn't touch me. He didn't touch me. He did not touch me," contradicting her trial testimony that Daniel had touched her breasts, which led to his wrongful conviction and 8-year prison sentence for "Sexual Battery” that never occurred.
Two accusers – Sherry (Ellis) Smith and Carla Raines – of the eleven who initially filed lawsuits in federal court against Daniel and Oklahoma City were not part of the settlement agreement because they did not pursue an appeal after the federal judge ruled against them. Both women made allegations only after they were solicited by detectives.
Previously released video deposition testimony and transcript pages reveal that accuser (Ellis) Smith, whose allegations led to a guilty verdict, initially told detectives her assailant was “a Black man” under 5’9” tall and “darker” than her own skin tone. She then admitted under oath on March 19, 2021, “I haven't never seen him [Holtzclaw] before trial. That's when I finally seen who the(y) accused of raping me.” Daniel, a 6’1” Japanese-American man who was even taller in police boots, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 62 years based on (Ellis) Smith’s allegations.
Accuser Carla Raines initially told a detective seven times in a recorded interview that no officer had been inappropriate with her except for a Black officer who had exposed himself to her, until Raines was led by the detective’s suggestive questions to accuse Daniel. Daniel was entirely acquitted of Raines’ allegations in the criminal trial.
Daniel Holtzclaw was wrongfully convicted based on fatally flawed forensic DNA analysis, a biased and faulty police investigation, ineffective counsel, and prosecutorial misconduct. OCPD’s misrepresentations of the DNA evidence not only caused investigators to succumb to tunnel vision and railroad Daniel, but also deprived him of a fair trial. OCPD forensic analyst Elaine Taylor flagrantly misrepresented a tiny quantity of DNA on the fly of Daniel's uniform pants. The prosecutor then misled the jurors, telling them it was a “fact” that the DNA derived from vaginal fluid although no body fluids were observed and non-intimate DNA transfer explained the evidence. These forensic science errors, unchallenged by Daniel's trial attorney, culminated in his wrongful conviction on 18 out of 36 counts of which he is entirely innocent.
Instead of taking responsibility for its flawed police investigation that railroaded Daniel, Oklahoma City officials are continuously refusing to release OCPD DNA Lab Manager Campbell Ruddock’s written review of forensic analyst Elaine Taylor’s error-filled DNA testimony in Daniel’s trial.
Former trial judge Timothy Henderson also shielded Mr. Ruddock’s written review from release during Daniel’s appeal in 2017 when the judge made pro-prosecution rulings in secret hearings about Ms. Taylor’s flawed testimony. Henderson’s biased secret hearing rulings about the DNA evidence encouraged the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to deny Daniel’s appeal and overlap with the time when the former judge now admits he was sexually involved with an assistant district attorney, one of several female attorneys who have made sexual assault allegations against Henderson.
Daniel continues to fight his wrongful convictions and expresses his thanks to the more than 67,000 people worldwide who have signed a Change.org petition to “Free Daniel Holtzclaw” because the facts support his innocence.
Daniel issued this statement from prison in response to Oklahoma City’s settlement agreement with nine of his accusers:
"Oklahoma City taxpayers should not have to pay settlement money to the accusers when the allegations against me are false and the city was released from the lawsuits. First, government officials pulled the wool over the jury’s eyes at my trial and caused my wrongful conviction. Now they are misleading the public to try to make them believe their tax dollars should be used to pay the accusers who made false allegations against me and the city. I put my life on the line for the citizens of Oklahoma City. They deserve to know the truth about the corrupt government employees who caused the false allegations against me and stripped me of my liberties. I pray Oklahoma County officials will investigate the truth of my case and reveal all the evidence showing my innocence. Oklahoma City refuses to release it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the thousands of people who have kept an open mind and questioned the prosecution’s narrative about me and my case, taking the time to learn about the evidence of my innocence." – Daniel Holtzclaw
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