A Baltimore police officer was found not guilty Tuesday of raping a drug suspect in exchange for her freedom, a verdict that threatens to unravel the criminal cases of two other officers accused of not stopping the alleged attack.
Less than two days into their deliberations, a Baltimore jury found Jemini Jones, 29, not guilty on all charges of rape and misconduct in office.
Within an hour, the woman who accused Jones of raping her at the Southwestern District station was in tears outside on Calvert Street as a woman with her yelled, “Police think they can get away with anything.”
The verdict caps a weeklong trial that brought both Jones and his accuser to the witness stand. Jones denied that he raped the woman he?d picked up on for smoking marijuana and brought back to the station, while she described in detail the room where she said it happened ? down to the condom stash investigators later found in his desk, a prosecutor said.
“I?m glad it?s over” so media attention can shift toward more positive law enforcement stories, Baltimore police union president Paul Blair said. He declined to comment further on the case, noting that he didn?t want to say anything that could “skew” the pending cases against officers Steven Hatley and Brian Shaffer. Prosecutors will take nearly two weeks to decide how to proceed with the rape charges against those officers, convening at a Feb. 2 court hearing to announce their decision, officials said.
Jones? accuser, who was spotted on Dec. 27, 2005, smoking a marijuana cigarette in a parked car, alleged that Hatley and Shaffer didn?t intervene later that night when she said Jones forced her to have sex.
A gag order in the case prevents attorneys from commenting on it.
Jones still faces rape charges in a separate pending case and is set for trial in February on illegal gun charges. No trial date is set for the second rape case, in which a woman claims Jones attacked her during a search of her boyfriend?s home.
