Results tagged “crossexamine”

If you were appalled by previous accounts of serial rapist John Hamlett and his ruthless cross-examination of one of his distraught victims during his trial, you'll be pleased to know that he was sentenced to 154 years in prison yesterday. Hamlett, whose decision to act his own lawyer during witness testimony backfired spectacularly, was convicted on all 12 counts for repeatedly breaking into the same building on East Third Street and Avenue B and sexually assaulting his victims at knife point. In giving Hamlett the maximum sentence yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley regretted that he could only incarcerate him for the rest of his life: "The sentence you deserve is beyond my ability to impose, so state prison will have to do."

Serial rapist John Hamlett's strategy to act as his own lawyer and cross-examine one of his victims has backfired, surprising no one except Hamlett himself. The Daily News reports that he "shook his head in disbelief" when a jury found him guilty yesterday on all 12 counts of sexual abuse, criminal sexual acts, robbery, burglary, and criminal impersonation of a police officer. In 2006, Hamlett broke into the same building on East Third Street and Avenue B three times. On the first visit, he pushed into a woman's apartment with a 10-inch knife and sexually assaulted her. Thirteen days later, he climbed through the fire-escape window into an empty apartment and stole a checkbook, returning days later and identifying himself to the female resident as a detective who had found her checkbook. During the trial, the distraught victim was forced to relive the assault by submitting to Hamlett's cross-examination; he now faces up to 165 years in prison, according to the Post.

Good morning. So this happened yesterday: Rape suspect John Hamlett, a convicted sex offender, was permitted to cross-examine an unnamed woman who accuses him of breaking into her East Third Street and Avenue B apartment in 2006 and sodomizing her at knifepoint. Against the advice of his lawyer, Hamlett insisted on cross-examining the distraught woman—a doctoral student in psychology now living in San Francisco—for about an hour. His questions included "I forced you to have oral sex, right?" and "You stated I put you in a chokehold? And you felt faint?" To which she responded, "Actually, I thought I was going to die." Finally, she begged the judge to stop the questioning, saying, "Do I have to do this? I've been through this. How many times do I have to go through this?" The judge told her she did, and Hamlett continued after a recess.