‘Sick to my stomach’: Survivor learns new trial ordered in divisive Kansas rape case
A rape survivor in a high-profile case that divided a Kansas town said her heart sank when she learned an appeals court overturned her alleged attacker’s conviction and granted him a new trial.
“I felt sick to my stomach and in a panic — I still do,” said Justise, whose last name is not being published to protect her family. “It’s been about three years since it happened and I had just got to the point of being able to talk about it without crying for the most part.”
Five days later, she still felt anxious, sick and sad. But she was also defiant: “I’m not going to let it stop me from making myself heard.”
Justise endured a difficult trial already when charges against Jacob Coleman Ewing bitterly divided Holton, a small town north of Topeka.
In June 2017, a jury found Ewing, 24, guilty on multiple counts of rape, aggravated criminal sodomy and battery against two women and he was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison.
On March 29, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that Ewing must have a new trial because of errors by the prosecutor and court.
The mother of the other rape survivor, who won’t be named under The Star’s policy to not identify alleged sexual assault victims or their immediate family members, said in an email she was shocked and then in disbelief that Ewing would be granted a new trial.
Then the outrage set in. She said there was nothing “fair” about her daughter being drugged, raped and sodomized. She felt sick that the survivors would have to go through the trial all over again.
“For me, it was like someone hit the rewind button and all of the same emotions came flooding back,” she said. “So I can only begin to imagine how it impacted the victims.”
The Appeals Court found that the first serious error came when the trial judge admitted evidence of pornography allegedly viewed by Ewing without prosecutors showing that he had ever viewed it — or that it was relevant to the case.
The second: special prosecutor Jacqie Spradling made comments during closing arguments that misstated the evidence and “inflamed the passions of the jury.”
“We hasten to point out that our finding is in no way intended to be a comment on the credibility of the alleged victims in this case,” the Appeals Court wrote in its ruling.
“But the Constitution requires that Ewing receive a fair trial on the charges the State has brought against him, and we conclude that the cumulative effect of the errors committed by the district court and the prosecutor denied Ewing his constitutional right to a fair trial.”
It’s not the first time the prosecutor, Spradling, has had a conviction overturned because of things she said in closing arguments.
Last year, the Kansas Supreme Court reversed the double-murder conviction of Dana Chandler after concluding that Spradling had misled a Shawnee County jury by making statements that weren’t true.
In the Ewing case, the Appeals Court found several instances where Spradling erred in her closing arguments, including that she misrepresented what DNA evidence proved, said that the women were victimized on social media and characterized one of them as low-functioning without evidence that it was true.
The Appeals Court wrote that Spradling “improperly inflamed the passions and prejudices of the jury by painting Ewing as a bad person who preyed on especially vulnerable women,” when she said he abused someone with autism, which wasn’t supported by evidence.
Spradling, who is now a prosecutor in Bourbon County, Kansas, declined to comment Thursday because the Ewing case is ongoing.
In addition to that case, Ewing was sentenced in November 2017 to 7.5 years for a separate attempted rape of a woman in 2014 and child exploitation related to images he had of an underage girl. He must register for life as a sex offender.
He is currently being held by the Kansas Department of Corrections at an out-of-state facility.
The mother of the survivor said she didn’t blame Spradling for the overturned conviction.
“The jurors were given the evidence, they saw the truth and they based their guilty decision on the truth,” she said. “It is my opinion that the jurors would have had the same guilty verdict with or without the porn.”
Spradling “put her heart and soul” into defending the survivors and seeking justice for them and they will always be thankful for everything she did, the mother said.
Justise said she blamed the justice system instead. She thinks that the case should have been tried outside of Jackson County because in a town of about 3,000 people too many jurors know the families involved.
Attorneys had a hard time finding jurors for Ewing’s trials because so many prospective jurors said they knew him or his family or considered themselves friends of his.
“If anyone didn’t get a fair trial, it was us,” Justise said.
Ewing is a former state football champion and a member of a well-known family. The survivors faced bitter comments online from Ewing’s family and others who attacked their credibility and character.
The attacks were renewed the weekend following the Appeals Courts ruling, including a posting that the girls were in this for their “15 minutes of fame in their pathetic lives,” the survivor’s mother said.
“The victims did not want this horrible action the first time — let alone a second time,” the mother said.
Justise doesn’t know if she would be able to go through another trial, or from where she would draw her strength.
She said she’s barely holding it together now.
“But I’m doing it because I have to,” Justise said. “I’m not going to let them win.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 4, 2019 at 5:03 PM.
