ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 22, 1996 TAG: 9602220039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A man charged with raping two prostitutes was released from jail Wednesday after a plea agreement resolved what a jury could not - that he is guilty of sexual abuse, but he will not go to prison.
Harry Lee Thompson pleaded no contest to aggravated sexual battery and was sentenced to five years, suspended after the six months he already has served awaiting trial.
Thompson, 29, had been locked up since August, after two prostitutes told police Thompson raped them on separate nights. One of the women told a jury last month that Thompson gave her a ride as she walked in an area frequented by prostitutes, then raped her at knifepoint in his van and left her naked on the street.
But a mistrial was declared after the jury deadlocked. Jurors could not decide whether to believe a convicted prostitute or a professional photographer with no criminal record who testified that the woman consented to having sex with him as part of her job.
The woman admitted working as a prostitute earlier on the night she was raped - earning $100 for having sex with four men - but said she was off duty when Thompson picked her up.
Given what Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Greg Phillips called "the risks of litigation," prosecutors offered Thompson a deal: Plead guilty to a reduced charge in one rape, and the remaining rape and sodomy charges would be dropped.
One of the victims said that although she is happy that Thompson now has a criminal record, she would like to have seen him serve more time.
"I've treated animals that I took to the [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] better than he treated me," the woman said. "It kills me to know that the son of a bis walking free. I'd like to have a bazooka to blow him away when he walks out of the jail."
But asking for a longer sentence from a second jury also would have carried the risk of getting nothing, Phillips said. "Although I believe them, they are both prostitutes and have lengthy criminal records," he said in explaining the plea agreement.
"It's just who we are; that's all it is," the victim said. "Next time, it'll be somebody that people give a s--- about, and then it'll be different."
Transvestite and former prostitute Paul Holt, a courthouse regular who attended Wednesday's hearing in Roanoke Circuit Court, agreed that Thompson should have served more than six months in jail for a crime that he said happens all too often in the city's prostitution subculture.
"A prostitute's life ain't worth spit," Holt said after the hearing. "Aren't they entitled to the same protection as everyone else?"
If Roanoke authorities continue to follow the example set in Thompson's case, "rather than putting [prostitutes] in jail, let's just let people go out and beat the hell out of them," Holt said.
Holt was referring to evidence that while sexually abusing one of the prostitutes, Thompson hit her in the face and smashed her head into a cinder-block wall, knocking one of her teeth out.
Although Judge Clifford Weckstein accepted the plea agreement and found Thompson guilty, he, too, expressed concerns. "I will reluctantly accept the judgment of the prosecuting authorities that it is appropriate to resolve these cases in this way."
Under voluntary sentencing guidelines, Thompson would have faced one to five years in prison if a judge had sentenced him without the agreement.
Another reason for the plea agreement, Phillips said, was a judge's decision that Phillips would not be allowed to try the two rape cases together before a jury - a decision he believed weakened his case. The charges that resulted in the hung jury were the ones dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Before Thompson went to trial last month, he had rejected a similar proposition. Prosecutors had offered to give him a suspended sentence in return for pleading guilty to rape, but he balked at the stigma attached to the charge.
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