The grand jury hearing the case of two NYPD officers who were accused of raping an 18-year-old woman handed down an indictment for the alleged rape, according to multiple reports.
The indictment was first reported on by the New York Post, who wrote that the pair of officers, Eddie Martins and Richard Hall, will likely be arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court early next week. If convicted, the Martins and Hall face between 3 and 25 years in prison for first-degree rape.
The Daily News reports that the grand jury also indicted the men for bribery, for telling the woman that they would let her go if she complied with their demands for sex.
A police spokesperson told Gothamist that both men have been suspended without pay.
The charges stem from a traffic stop the pair of officers, detectives with the Brooklyn South Narcotics unit, made on September 15th in Calvert Vaux Park in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Hall and Martin allegedly pulled over a car the victim was driving, and found a small amount of pot and prescription pills. The 18-year-old woman had two friends in the car with her who the officers allegedly let go, before demanding the woman lift her shirt to show them she didn't have any drugs in her bra, then handcuffed her and put her in the back of an unmarked police van.
The officers then allegedly drove around with the woman while she was handcuffed and demanded sex from her as an alternative to taking her to the 60th Precinct house. Martins and Hall then allegedly parked the van in a Chipotle near the park, where Martins is alleged to have raped her and both men forced her to give her oral sex, all while she was still handcuffed. The two men then allegedly dropped the victim off a few blocks from the 60th Precinct house, where a friend who had been with her during the earlier traffic stop found her.
"We are going to vigorously contest these charges in a court of law, rather than the court of public opinion," Mark A. Bederow, a lawyer representing Detective Martins, told the Times.
When the investigation into the alleged rape started, Martins and Hall allegedly claimed that sex did happen, but that it was consensual.
"I don't know how anything is consensual when you're on-duty, undercover, handcuff somebody and brutally rape them. It's just a mockery," the woman's lawyer, Michael David, told Gothamist after that claim.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office told Gothamist they had no comment on the alleged indictment. David did not respond to a request for comment. but previously told Gothamist his client was "emotionally a complete wreck...She's not the same person she was."
