February 20, 2002
Section: TUCSON/REGION
Page: B1
Ex-border cop guilty of kidnap and rape
Tim Steller
Said Salvadoran entrant had agreed to have sex
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A Tucson jury convicted a former Border Patrol agent Tuesday of kidnapping a Salvadoran entrant from the agency’s Tombstone checkpoint and raping her.
The jury of 10 men and two women disbelieved testimony by defendant Dennis M. Johnson that the sex he had with the 21-year-old victim was consensual, said foreman Kenneth Hofstra.
Jurors were unwilling to look past the image painted by prosecutors of the woman at the desolate Cochise County crime scene: naked, handcuffed and on her knees, performing oral sex on Johnson.
“The evidence on both counts that was most telling was the fact that the defendant admitted he had handcuffed (the victim) with her hands behind the back,” Hofstra said. “That flew in the face of the idea that it was consensual.”
Source: www.azstarnet.com
