Summary: Daniel Ken Holtzclaw (born December 10, 1986) is a former police officer in the United States. He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, and other sexual charges while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department.[1] Holtzclaw was convicted of eighteen counts involving eight different women. According to the police investigators, Holtzclaw abused his position as an officer by running background checks to find information that could be used to coerce victims into sex.[2] During the trial, the defense questioned the victims' credibility during cross-examination, bringing up their criminal records.[3] Of the thirteen women who accused Holtzclaw, several had criminal histories such as drug arrests, and all of them were African American.[4] The prosecution argued that victims were deliberately chosen by Holtzclaw for these reasons.[5] Holtzclaw pleaded not guilty to all charges. On December 10, 2015, he was convicted on 18 of 36 charges, and on January 21, 2016, he was sentenced to 263 years in prison.[6][7][8] Jason Flom (a founding Board Member of the Innocence Project), right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin and others have supported Holtzclaw's claims of innocence. On August 1, 2019, Holtzclaw was denied an appeal by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, which upheld both his convictions and prison sentence.[9][10][11] The defense petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States on the basis that merging seventeen cases together "strains credulity". On March 9, 2020, the Supreme Court refused the petition.[12]
