A San Francisco woman beat the rap on a felony assault charge, as the jury was shown evidence that the fellow she stabbed had secretly recorded the two of them having sex, and then sent the video to her teenage children.
The SF Public Defender’s Office announced Monday that a San Francisco woman, identified only as “Maria,” successfully beat the felony assault charges of a man who she stabbed in the arm in 2021. She had dated the man three years earlier, and she says he threatened her to get her to come to his apartment, and once there, he started hitting and grabbing her. She felt he was trying to rape her and stabbed him, and the jury apprently found her story compelling.
But the Chronicle notes an even more outrageous aspect to this case. That paper reports that the man had secretly recorded the two of them having sex during their brief relationship, and was sending her teenage children revenge porn videos of the encounter.
The children testified that he’d sent them the videos from a burner Facebook account, and that they did not even know the man. Maria testified the man had been stalking her and showing up at her workplace “on a daily basis,” which apparently several of her colleagues testified to confirm.
Moreover, police body cam video shown to the jury convinced them that law enforcement did not follow up on Maria’s claims that she was the one being harassed. The public defender’s office said “the officers either left out key details from their reports or failed to translate everything she was saying,” and alleged that they did not investigate the harassment claims.
“This egregious prosecution holds up an ugly mirror to the criminal justice system,” deputy public defender Will Helvestine said in a statement. “It shows how police can refuse to meaningfully investigate certain leads, how prosecutors pursue cases based on half-truths in police reports, and how people who are clearly victims can end up being wrongly criminalized.”
Image: Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash
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