In the summer of 1994, the community of San Antonio, Texas was in shock following the violent and brutal allegations brought by two sisters aged 7 and 10. The sisters alleged that their aunt, 22-year-old Elizabeth Ramirez, and her friends Anna Vasquez, Kristie Mayhugh, and Cassandra Rivera viciously raped them during their week-long visit at Ramirez’s apartment.
The allegations against the women, all of whom were openly gay, were bizarre and constantly changing. The girls claimed one of the women had put a weapon to their heads – a knife in one telling, but later a gun, then two guns. The story also changed with each interview regarding which women did what, who was in the apartment, and whether other children were ever present. Additionally, it wasn’t just the girls’ story that was changing, but the story their grandmother, the outcry witness, gave fluctuated as well regarding how and what the girls told her.
However, these allegations by the girls were supported by the testimony of child abuse expert Dr. Nancy Kellogg, who frequently testified for prosecutors. Kellogg testified that a mark she observed on the hymen of one of the girls was a scar likely caused by painful penetration. Further, Kellogg wrote in her report and told authorities she believed the attack was “satanic.”
The problem with this testimony, as the American Academy of Pediatrics explained in a 2007 report, is that “torn or injured hymens do not leave scars as a matter of scientific fact.” Variations like the ones Dr. Kellogg claimed were evidence of traumatic injury are, in fact, normal. Also, there has never been any evidence to connect Satanism to any of the four women. However, this issue was never addressed, and the testimony became a crucial piece of evidence against the women.
Elizabeth Ramirez was the first to be brought to trial in 1997. During her trial, her defense attorney was able to keep the jury from hearing speculation that the alleged attacks were “satanic-related,” but prosecutor Philip Kazen got the message across nonetheless with language about Ramirez having “sacrificed” her niece on “the altar of lust,” and told the jury she had “held a 9-year-old girl up as a sacrificial lamb to her friends.”
Elizabeth Ramirez was the first to be brought to trial in 1997. During her trial, her defense attorney was able to keep the jury from hearing speculation that the alleged attacks were “satanic-related,” but prosecutor Philip Kazen got the message across nonetheless with language about Ramirez having “sacrificed” her niece on “the altar of lust,” and told the jury she had “held a 9-year-old girl up as a sacrificial lamb to her friends.”
Kazen went farther than just mentioning satanic abuse. During his closing statements, Kazen relied on the women’s sexuality to prove motive for the assault. He also told the jury he wasn’t asking them to convict Ramirez because she’s gay, but that being a lesbian was consistent with her abusing girls.
Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to 37 years in prison.
Vasquez, Mayhugh, and Rivera were all tried together after Ramirez’s conviction. Again, the prosecutors relied on the women's sexual orientation as motive evidence to explain to the jury why these women would want to sexually assault girls in their closing arguments.
All three women were convicted and each sentenced to 15 years.
However, the convictions against the women began to unravel in early 2012 when one of Ramirez's two nieces, now in her twenties, stepped forward to say she had lied.
Stephanie Limon, the younger of the two sisters, called journalist Debbie Nathan and told her none of the abuse happened. Limon went on to explain that her family members coached her on what to tell the police because of their anger toward Ramirez's sexual orientation.
She explained her father, Javier Limon, was the one who came up with the idea and forced her to do it. In the months leading up to the allegations, Javier Limon, who had just broken up with Ramirez’s sister Rosemary, had made many unsuccessful attempts to court Elizabeth Ramirez, including asking for her hand in marriage on several occasions despite Ramirez’s consistent rejection.
In an interview for the documentary Southwest of Salem, Stephanie Limon explained:
I remember everything [Javier] coached me to say, as well as my grandmother. I’m sorry it has taken this long for me to know what truly happened. You must understand I was threatened, and I was told that if I did tell the truth that I would end up in prison, taken away, and even get my ass beat.Javier Limon went on to have another bitter custody battle with his next partner, Carina Hooper. Hooper described Javier Limon in an interview as a “hurtful, mean, a sociopath.” Javier Limon also accused Hooper’s son of sexually abusing their daughter, and reported Hooper for neglect to Child Protective Services. Her son took a plea deal and is now a registered sex offender.
Soon after Stephanie Limon recanted her testimony, Dr. Kellogg’s testimony regarding the scar on one of the girl’s hymen was brought into focus and discredited. Kellogg herself came forward and stated she would not give the same testimony today.
Further, as media attention on the case grew, it was realized that while the sisters testified all four women were in the apartment at the same time during the sexual assault, if investigators for the prosecutor's office had actually checked the work records of the women during that time frame, they would have realized some of the women couldn’t possibly have been at Ramirez’s apartment during the assault.
With this new evidence coming to light, defense attorney Mike Ware and the Innocence Project of Texas filed for post-conviction relief to have the four women’s verdicts overturned.
Ware explained in an interview with CNN why he believes justice was not done in these women’s trials, stating:
I think the only reason that the investigation was seriously pursued, why there wasn't more skepticism about the preposterous allegations in the first place, was because these four women had recently come out as gay, that they were openly gay.Finally, in November 2016, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that, “no rational juror could find any of the four Applicants guilty of any of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” and exonerated Elizabeth Ramirez, Anna Vasquez, Kristie Mayhugh, and Cassandra Rivera of all crimes.
The San Antonio Four demonstrate how homophobia and bias works within our justice system to cloud the judgement of the police, prosecution, and community. The fact that these women were Latina and lesbian was actively used against them during their persecution. In fact, the jury foreman on Ramirez’s trial, Lonnie Gentry, was a minister who admitted during voir dire he believed homosexuality to be a sin. There is no way that, along with prosecutor Philip Kazen telling the jury that lesbians were more likely to sexually assault young girls than straight women, did not sway the jury.
These women spent decades of their lives in prison because Philip Kazan blatantly and unapologetically capitalized on the persistent and thoroughly incorrect notion that LGBTQ people are predisposed to sexually harming children in order to win his case. And, not only did he get away with doing this, but he went on to become a judge and ran for District Attorney in 2014.
While there is a happy ending in that all four women have now been exonerated, there shouldn’t have been a story requiring an ending in the first place.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteWow. Thank you for bringing my attention to this story. As a law student who has learned (or started to learn) the ins and outs of the criminal justice system, my initial reaction is, "this is simply a mishandling of the rules of justice". There are rules in place to guard against this kind of disservice (I'm thinking standards of proof, rules of evidence, etc.). But, what your commentary reminded me of is that even with all those rules, the law is very much susceptible to unfair and abhorrent biases like the one you spoke of here. The rules apply differently to marginalized groups. Currently, at least in the criminal justice system, we see this most prevalently with race. In this case, though, the prosecutor worked within the boundaries of the law and skirted the line closely with the rules, in order to discriminate against and vilify lesbian women.
It is alarming to recognize that the rules set up to guard against injustice can be used to promote just that. I viscerally reacted to the prosecutor's chosen language and conduct in this case. Perhaps I gravitate towards his wrongdoings because I am a law student, but it reinforces what we have talked about continuously in class: lawyers need training in gender, queer, and race theory. Be that cured by requiring such a class in law school, or by necessitating a training post-bar, this is essential to ensuring that our administrators of justice (who starts as lawyers, but as you note can very well become judges and justices), are aware of the implications of their conduct and the way the law is not applied uniformly. If more lawyers were sensitive to these issues, perhaps arguments like those proposed in the San Antonio Four case would be less frequent. All that said, I recognize that there are inherent issues in the written laws and statutes that discriminate against certain groups. We need to solve both of these issues.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the extremely disheartening story of the San Antonio Four. It is troubling to see how pervasive racial and sexual biases dismantle the effectiveness of our legal system, especially in the criminal justice context. Rather than placing due emphasis on the conflicting testimony or conducting deeper investigation, societal beliefs about the so-called “motivations” of lesbian women and their supposed “connection to Satanism” decided the fate of the San Antonio Four.
This is yet another example of the grave injustice the law inflicts on marginalized groups. The structural flaws of the law unfold particularly in situations like these because the law is not written in a manner that caters to effectively governing marginalized groups. Despite some modifications, the law continues to be predominantly based on a “white male” ideal, which fails to reflect the general makeup of our population. Additional structural changes must be made to the law to be able to adequately address different groups that make up our society. In addition, predispositions and stereotypes associated with different groups need to be dismantled through education and media portrayals to ensure that all members of society obtain fair trials. In particular, judges, lawyers, and jury members should be educated on race, gender, and cultural differences. Moreover, additional procedural safeguards should be embedded in the legal system to ensure fairness for all groups. For example, requiring judges to periodically undergo an impartiality or biases assessment by a neutral third party or having judges’ decisions be reviewed more closely for patterns of bias may ensure more objectivity and fairness in trials. Subjective biases should not be entering the courtroom as they distract the attention of lawmakers and jury members away from the substance of the issue at hand and bring focus to issues that play no role in what is being litigated such as being “lesbian” or being a “Latina” as in the case of the San Antonio Four.