Gina Barton

Sep 26, 2024 | ca.news.yahoo.com | Gina Barton

The story of a cold-case rape investigation in Michigan reveals a wide spectrum of failures surrounding the nation’s handling of sexual assault cases, including under a federal grant program that was intended to help law enforcement agencies test old rape kits and investigate the cases. A three-part series in USA TODAY details the slow process of justice in a case in Lansing, Michigan. There, in 2012, a teenager named Joslyn Phillips accused an acquaintance named Marshawn Curtis of rape.

Sep 26, 2024 | usatoday.com | Gina Barton

Information in this story came from 30 hours of interviews, a review of more than 1,500 pages of police records and court documents, video- and audio-recorded interrogations and in-person reporting.  Phrases that appear inside quotation marks represent a subject’s exact words as heard by the reporter, written in a transcript, quoted in a police report or captured on a recording.

Sep 26, 2024 | usatoday.com | Gina Barton

The story of a cold-case rape investigation in Michigan reveals a wide spectrum of failures surrounding the nation’s handling of sexual assault cases, including under a federal grant program that was intended to help law enforcement agencies test old rape kits and investigate the cases. A three-part series in USA TODAY details the slow process of justice in a case in Lansing, Michigan. There, in 2012, a teenager named Joslyn Phillips accused an acquaintance named Marshawn Curtis of rape.

Sep 26, 2024 | usatoday.com | Gina Barton

LANSING, MICHIGAN – Police vehicles barreled through the Walmart parking lot as Marshawn Curtis helped his 4-year-old daughter into the car. Before he could start the engine, the cops boxed him in. We have a warrant for your arrest, one of them informed him.  The charge was rape. The victim was Joslyn Phillips, who had gone to his house on his 19th birthday a decade earlier.

Sep 26, 2024 | usatoday.com | Gina Barton

LANSING, MICHIGAN – As Annie Harrison looked at the email from the lab, she felt sick. It had happened again. The police hadn’t pursued a case against Marshawn Curtis back in 2012, and now, nearly a decade later, his DNA had matched evidence in a second rape case. She worried there could be even more victims out there. If the case went to trial, one witness could be enough.