Alvin Campbell, an alleged serial rapist who’s the brother of the state’s legal professional basic, has misplaced his pretrial detention case in entrance of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom.
Campbell, who’s accused of raping 9 ladies in Boston and a protracted listing of different fees, has been locked up within the Suffolk County Nashua Avenue Jail earlier than his trial scheduled for later this 12 months.
After Campbell was ordered held with out bail underneath the state’s dangerousness legislation, he appealed a number of occasions to be launched on cheap money bail — arguing that rape shouldn’t be an offense for pretrial detention underneath the dangerousness statute.
Judges have continued to disclaim his petitions for launch, and the state’s Supreme Judicial Courtroom has now agreed with these previous rulings to maintain Campbell locked up earlier than trial.
The dangerousness statute can result in the pretrial detention of a defendant charged with a felony offense involving “the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force against the person of another.”
“The question in this case is whether rape… qualifies as a predicate offense under the force clause of the pretrial detention statute,” reads the Supreme Judicial Courtroom ruling. “Because rape is a crime of physical violence requiring unwanted forceful penetration of another person, we hold that it does qualify.
“We reject the notion of a nonviolent forcible rape,” the SJC provides in its ruling.
Campbell’s trial for the 9 alleged rapes and a complete of 32 fees is scheduled for December. The costs embrace a number of counts every of rape, aggravated rape, assault and battery, indecent assault, photographing an unsuspecting nude particular person, and a single account of assault to rape.
Suffolk DA prosecutors accuse Campbell of posing as a rideshare driver to lure in drunk ladies earlier than violently attacking them in his automotive. After the ladies handed out, he proceeded to allegedly rape them, usually taking images or recording movies of the assaults, based on prosecutors.
After being locked up earlier than trial, Campbell over the past two years has pushed for judges to rethink his pretrial detention.
“Regarding the (dangerousness statute) pretrial detention orders, the motion judge concluded that because rape has ‘as an element the use of force,’ it qualifies as a predicate offense under the force clause,” the SJC wrote a few previous ruling. “The judge also determined that the defendant posed ‘an extremely high danger’ to the community.”
However then Campbell filed an emergency petition for aid, asking the courtroom vacate the pretrial detention orders and launch him on cheap money bail.
“The defendant argued that rape could not serve as a predicate for detention under (the dangerousness statute) and that, even if it could, ‘the evidence in this case (did) not require detention,’ ” the ruling reads.
Nevertheless, Campbell was denied that emergency petition as a single justice reasoned that rape qualifies as a predicate offense for pretrial detention underneath the pressure clause as a result of a component of rape contains the use or threatened use of pressure.
“To decide otherwise and determine that rape is not an offense with physical force at its heart would be to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the violation,” the SJC wrote in its ruling. “Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the single justice.”
Campbell is the elder brother of Massachusetts Lawyer Normal Andrea Campbell.
