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The victim told police she and Carlos Harper never had sexual relations prior to the assault. Her two young children were reportedly in the apartment during the incident.

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Credit: BCSO, Carlos Harper mug shot (PHOTO: Bexar County Sheriff's Office)

SAN ANTONIO - Police said a man was arrested after he was accused of telling a woman he has "full-blown AIDS" just before he sexually assaulted her.

Carlos Harper, 40, is accused of violently raping a woman in an apartment in the 16000 block of Henderson Pass Monday, according to the San Antonio Police Department.

An arrest affidavit details that Harper had been staying with the victim as her guest for about two weeks prior to the assault.

The victim was reportedly planning to vacate her apartment and leave the state, and she told police she and Harper never had sexual relations prior to the assault.

According to the affidavit, the victim said Harper forced his way into the bathroom while she was partially naked. She said she had refused to let him watch her shower. Harper is accused of saying, "It's all or nothing," and "I got full-blown AIDS" while grabbing her neck.

She told police Harper then raped her and watched as he forced her to "wash herself off in her tub" after the reported assault.

The victim told police she waited until Harper was asleep to wake up her two small children around 4 a.m. Tuesday, take them to their paternal grandmother's home and tell the grandmother she was assaulted. Police went to the apartment at the victim's request, and took Harper into custody.

Upon his arrest Tuesday morning, Harper denied the assault and told police he "had unprotected sex with the victim on multiple occasions." He is charged with sexual assault.

https://www.kens5.com/article/news/crime/affidavit-man-accused-of-telling-woman-he-has-full-blown-aids-before-raping-her/273-537344339

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This photo provided by the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office in September 2022, shows Antonio D. Jones. He was booked Jan. 13, 2021, on charges of second-degree rape, false imprisonment and distribution of meth. (Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office via AP)

ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) — A woman outfitted with a tiny microphone and hidden camera walked up to a dilapidated drug house on a chilly afternoon last year looking to buy meth from a dealer known on the streets as “Mississippi.”

But as the informant disappeared inside with a career criminal with a rap sheet spanning three decades, her law enforcement handlers left her undercover on her own — unprotected and unmonitored in real time. And the devices she carried passively recorded a crime far more horrific than any drug buy.

Under threat of violence, the dealer forced the woman to perform oral sex on him — twice — in an attack so brazen he paused at one point to conduct a separate drug deal, according to interviews and confidential law enforcement records obtained by The Associated Press.

“It was one of the worst depictions of sexual abuse I have ever seen,” said a local official who viewed the footage and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the ongoing case.

“Just the audio from it is enough to turn your stomach,” the official said. “It’s a female being sexually brutalized while she’s crying and whimpering.”

Even as the woman cried and her assailant threatened to put her “in the hospital,” narcotics deputies remained down the block in the blighted neighborhood, unaware of what was going on. That’s because, as authorities told the AP, they never considered such an attack might happen and the devices the woman carried didn’t have the ability to transmit the operation to law enforcement in real time.

“It was recording but not to where my guys were monitoring it,” said Rapides Parish Sheriff Mark Wood, blaming the January 2021 incident on his inexperience from only being in the top job six months at that time. “There are always things you learn that you can do better.”

The case in this central Louisiana city of 47,000 underscores the perils confidential informants face seeking to “work off” criminal charges in loosely regulated and often secretive arrangements with law enforcement. Police rely on informants in a wide range of cases, compensating them with money or leniency in their own cases yet often providing little or no training.

Records show it wasn’t until the woman left the area on her own and contacted her handlers that deputies searched the single-family home and arrested Antonio D. Jones, 48, on charges of second-degree rape, false imprisonment and distribution of meth after recovering 5 grams of the substance in the sting.

Deputies surveilling the home after the woman went inside assumed she “must be OK” because someone else entered after her to buy drugs, said Lt. Mark Parker, the ranking officer in the operation.

Parker, who retired this month, told the AP that the sheriff’s office didn’t start using equipment capable of monitoring in real time until after the alleged rape, and often would send informants into stings without any recording equipment at all.

“We’ve always done it this way,” Parker said. “She was an addict and we just used her as an informant like we’ve done a million times before. Looking back, it’s easy to say, ‘What if?’”

And while it’s not clear what kind of deal the woman struck with the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office, her cooperation as an informant didn’t seem to make much difference in clearing her own criminal record.

Just three weeks after her recorded assault, court records show, the woman was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia stemming from an arrest that happened about a month before the sting, and she’s been pulled over and booked on possession charges at least twice since then. The woman, who declined interview requests and is not being named because the AP does not typically identify victims of sexual assault, pleaded guilty to possessing drug paraphernalia last year and was placed in behavioral health court in lieu of jail time.

“It’s absolutely horrible,” said the woman’s attorney, Harold Murry. “She has a drug problem and I don’t know if she’s going to be able to beat it or not. But when you become a snitch, they keep your drug problem going and then they arrest you for it.”

Wood, who worked in the sheriff’s office for two decades before his election, confirmed that the alleged rape has prompted his department to finally update its equipment to keep an eye on undercover transactions as they’re happening.

“That changed everything, the way we do business,” Wood said. “Technology has grown unbelievably. There’s things that we can do to keep the folks safe.”

Experts who reviewed the case for AP noted that the technology to monitor undercover transactions has existed for generations and should have been used to protect the woman in this case. The safety of the confidential informant is paramount, they said, prioritized over evidence collection or any other aim of the operation.

“I see this as a massive ineptitude,” said Michael Levine, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who worked undercover for years and now testifies as an expert on police procedures. The deputies, he said, should “never in a million years” have sent the informant into such a high-risk setting without the ability to monitor the operation. “They’re cowards.”

David Redemann, a longtime Seattle police officer who now leads training on such stings, said the case highlights the vast disparities in law enforcement’s undercover playbook, with many agencies lacking the resources to properly train officers or monitor informant drug buys.

“We do this 10,000 times a day around the country, and not everybody has transmitting equipment,” Redemann said. “Is this tragic as hell? Absolutely. We need to learn from what happened here.”

Law enforcement’s use of confidential informants is akin to a black market in which “deals are made under the table and often undocumented,” said Alexandra Natapoff, a Harvard law professor and leading expert on informants.

Not only are informants treated as disposable pawns, she said, but qualified immunity has made it very difficult to sue the police when things go off the rails.

“As a matter of common sense and humanity, police should take obvious, straightforward precautions to protect their informants,” Natapoff said, “but there is no law that says they have to.”

With few exceptions, states have been slow to track or regulate law enforcement’s use of informants, even in the wake of high-profile oversights. In 2009, Florida lawmakers adopted Rachel’s Law, the first comprehensive legislation in the country governing use of informants, after the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman in connection with an undercover drug sting for Tallahassee police. Among other things, the law requires police consider the “risk of physical harm” to the informant.

None of the deputies who arranged the undercover buy in Louisiana were disciplined, the sheriff said, and no other law enforcement agencies were asked to examine the handling of the case. A spokesman for the Alexandria Police Department said the agency had not been made aware of the sexual assault, even though it allegedly happened in the city and the suspect Jones has an extensive criminal history dating to 1992, including convictions in neighboring Mississippi for robbery, car theft, aggravated assault and drug distribution.

Jones is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 17, having refused a plea offer from prosecutors. His attorney declined to comment.

Last month, as AP was reporting this story, prosecutors without explanation reduced Jones’ charges from forcible second-degree rape to third-degree rape, or simple rape, significantly lowering the amount of time he could spend behind bars if convicted.

Prosecutors did not respond to requests for comment on why the charges were reduced or why the informant was charged with drug crimes even after her cooperation in the ill-fated sting.

Weeks before the charges were reduced, Rapides Parish District Attorney Phillip Terrell defended the deputies’ handling of the case, telling AP “there is no indication in my file that law enforcement did anything wrong.” The prospect of any informant coming under attack “had not crossed their mind,” the district attorney said, adding he was “certain they wish this would not have occurred.”

“They never thought of that, and had they known that was occurring they would have certainly stopped it,” Terrell said. “One of their big concerns now is the safety of the confidential informant.”

___
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org. Follow Jim Mustian on Twitter at @JimMustian.

https://apnews.com/article/crime-alexandria-5fdc645d413aaec5b4078b2f23579149

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Jason Billingsley

The man accused of handcuffing and raping a woman at her Baltimore apartment days before police said he beat and killed Pava LaPere, a 26-year-old tech entrepreneur, had been released early from prison, despite having a violent past that included a conviction for a sex offense.

Jason Billingsley’s criminal history dates back to 2009 and includes charges of attempted rape, armed robbery and false imprisonment. In 2015, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a woman told police that he had held her at knifepoint, strangled her and forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to court documents.

Under a plea agreement, however, 16 of those years were suspended, leaving Billingsley to serve 14 years behind bars. Then in October 2022, five years ahead of his scheduled release, he walked out of prison a free man.

Billingsley was let out of prison under Maryland’s diminution credit system, a policy that allows inmates to reduce the term of their incarceration through such things as good behavior and completing educational courses. Thirty-eight states have similar programs on the books. The violent and repetitive nature of Billingsley’s crimes, however, have left many wondering why he was eligible for the credits and if he should have been released at all.

Baltimore police also initially did not tell the public about the rape days before LaPere’s killing, prompting even more questions about whether her death could have been prevented.

"Rapists shouldn’t be let out early. Period," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said at a news conference Thursday, where he also called Billingsley a "sociopath." "When you rape someone — no matter if it’s someone’s daughter, son, their wife — you should not get out early, period, for that kind of offense."

The crimes
On Wednesday night, less than a year after his release, Billingsley was arrested in the slaying of LaPere and the sexual assault of another woman. LaPere was found Monday at her Baltimore apartment strangled and viciously beaten with a brick, court documents state. Her body was half-clothed, according to the documents, which did not offer details about the nature of the crime.

Days earlier on Sept. 19, Billingsley allegedly raped a woman multiple times and slit her throat before dousing her and a man with liquid and setting them on fire, documents state.

But that wasn’t Billingsley’s first run-in with the law.

In 2013, a woman told police that she had gotten into an argument with her boyfriend and was walking down the street in Baltimore when she stopped to sit on some steps, according to the court documents. She said a man she knew as “Jason” approached her and asked what was wrong and if she had a place to stay.

“When she told him she did not, he offered to let her stay with him at a nearby location,” the documents state. “She agreed to go with him and the two walked to an unknown house.”

The woman said she and Billingsley sat and talked in a bedroom, according to the documents. When he said he wanted to have sex with her, she stated that she wanted to leave. Billingsley then hit the woman in the face, started to choke her and threatened to shoot her if she didn’t do what he said, the documents show. Billingsley, armed with a knife, forced the woman to perform oral sex on him before stealing $53 from her wallet, according to the documents. He then told her to leave.

Billingsley faced several charges, including first-and second-degree assault, attempted first-degree rape, armed robbery, false imprisonment and theft of less than $100, court documents show.

In 2010, Billingsley was also accused of punching an ex-girlfriend in the face, pinning her down and stealing her phone, other court documents state. He pleaded guilty the following year to assault.

And in 2009, he was arrested following allegations that he and another suspect robbed a man of $10. Court records state that the alleged victim’s nose was bleeding when he spoke to police. Billingsley pleaded guilty in that case, the documents state, noting that he later violated his probation.

‘Good conduct credit’
Under the system that let Billingsley out of prison early, inmates receive “good conduct credit” automatically at intake “subject to the inmate’s future good behavior,” a 2020 state report says. The credits are described as a “behavioral incentive” and a way to reduce overcrowding in prisons.

The other credits are earned throughout the prisoner’s incarceration period. Inmates who have satisfactory progress in or complete various courses and therapy can receive monthly education credits, the report says. Those who participate in assigned job duties can get monthly work credits. Inmates can also shave off time by earning credits for participating in “special selected work projects or other special programs,” the report states. It’s not clear what type of credits Billingsley had earned.

Stacey Lee, a professor of law and ethics at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, said the policy makes sense, in theory, because prisons are overcrowded and understaffed.

“However, if you are a violent offender your access to the number of credits you can get is supposed to be limited,” she said.

Given Billingsley’s past, Lee doesn’t think he should have ever been eligible to receive credit for an early release, despite not violating any of the provisions that would make him ineligible.

“To me, he didn’t seem like a good candidate,” Lee said.

Under the current guidelines, criminals sentenced for first- or second-degree rape or a sex offense against a victim under the age of 16, or repeat offenders who committed a third-degree sex offense against a victim under 16 are not eligible. An inmate who violated lifetime sexual offender supervision is also ineligible.

“I get that it allows us to empty the prisons a little faster, but when it results in them being readmitted and causing more harm once they’re released, I have a problem with that,” Lee said.

David Jaros, a criminal law professor and faculty director of the Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the University of Baltimore School of Law, also supports the system. He thinks the credit system allows inmates to “take part in programming and work programs that actually contribute to their rehabilitation.”

“And it contributes to the safety of the prisons themselves,” he said. “The safer they are, ultimately the safer the public is because the more we traumatize people while they’re inside, the more likely dangerous people are going to be coming back out onto the streets.”

Jaros said he understood that the diminution credit system will now come under intense scrutiny because of the horrific nature of what happened but doesn’t think it should affect the policy.

“It is easy to say that this is someone who should never see the light of day, but we don’t know who that person is that should never see the light of day. There are people who get out and are rehabilitated who then become active members of their community,” he said. “I think the wrong takeaway here is that the problem is diminution credits.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/violent-sex-offender-now-accused-rape-pava-laperes-murder-got-prison-e-rcna118093