Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of rape or sexual assault that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can find help and discreet resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline website or by calling 1-800-656-4673.
(NewsNation) — An Oklahoma state representative has criticized the justice system in Payne County, Oklahoma, after convicted rapist Jesse Mack Butler was spared jail time.
Despite being sentenced to nearly 80 years in prison after admitting to a string of sex crimes against teenage girls, Butler, 18, avoided time behind bars, triggering outrage in the college town of Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Butler, who is from Stillwater, about an hour north of Oklahoma City, escaped prison time after pleading no contest to multiple rape and assault charges.
“We have a huge problem going on here in Payne County with this case like Butler, many cases like that case,” Rep. J.J. McCarthy told NewsNation.
“Rape cases that are being covered up, child abuse cases that are being covered up. We have cronyism, favoritism going on in the court system,” he alleged.
In March, when Butler was 17, he was charged, as an adult, with 10 felony counts related to sex crimes against two girls, both fellow students at Stillwater High School. One of the girls was choked unconscious and almost died, according to her doctor.
Butler’s charges included two attempted rapes, three charges of “rape by instrumentation,” one count of sexual battery, one count of forcible oral sodomy, two counts of “domestic assault and battery by strangulation” and one count of domestic assault and battery.
Following the decision, there was speculation that the lighter sentence was due to the influence and connections of Butler’s father, a former football director at Oklahoma State University.
Grand jury investigation filing
“It’s easier to find Bigfoot than an honest judge in Payne County, and so again, that’s what this is about, it’s about court corruption. It is about reprehensible actions, like a rapist who raped two women, choke one within 30 seconds of being dead. He’s allowed to walk the streets…” McCarthy said.
McCarthy has filed paperwork asking for a grand jury investigation into the alleged corruption in Payne County.
“I think the grand jury is going to be about holding those people who did this, finding out why this has been allowed. And again, to show this as an extreme pattern, a continual pattern, not one case, many, many cases,” he said.
Victims’ rights violated: Attorney
An attorney for one of Butler’s victims says that both girls’ legal rights were violated in the plea deal that was struck.
Allegedly, the girls were not notified about hearings that they had a right to attend, and they say they were shut out of the plea negotiation process entirely.
The lawyer says one victim was given less than 10 minutes notice before the plea deal was entered.
“These victims, in my opinion, were denied justice by the system that was supposed to protect them,” Justin Shepherd, a true crime influencer, told “Banfield.”