When I first heard this morning that Kenneth Hinson was acquitted of kidnapping, rape and attempted murder charges, I was shocked.
This was the so-called South Carolina “dungeon” rapist—he allegedly kidnapped two teenaged girls who were sleeping together in one bed, took them one at a time to a secret “bunker”, really a big hole in the ground covered by a concrete slab, tied them up and raped them over the course of several days.
He left them to die (according to prosecutors) but the girls escaped, trekked through the woods and managed to contact 911.
Seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Two traumatized victims, wrists still swollen from being tied up, Hinson with a record of raping a 12 year old girl in the past, drugs, guns, a secret dungeon….the stuff of movies and a slam dunk conviction, one would think.
Apparently, according to the foreman of the jury who acquitted Hinson, it wasn’t quite that simple.
Here are a few of the discrepancies the jury found in the evidence presented as reported by The State:
~ Sleeping through a kidnapping. The girls testified they both were asleep in a small bed when Hinson entered their trailer and grabbed one of them, threatening to kill her if she made a noise. The other girl said she did not wake up until Hinson returned for her.
~ Not noticing the bunker. The girls testified they had not seen the chamber before Hinson raised the table hiding the entrance hole. Hinson said the girls knew of it, but his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s teenage son did not; the jurors thought everyone would have known about the bunker.
~ Drugs. One of the girls testified she bought “drugs” last summer from someone a defense witness said sold crack. “We all know people who smoke crack will do just about anything to smoke crack again,” Williams said.
~ Socks. A pair worn by one of the girls was dirty but had no wear marks, pine-needle fragments or tears some jurors expected to see from running about a mile through the woods after escaping the bunker.
~ Feet. The other girl said she ran barefoot. “But the pictures showed no scratches, no abrasions,” Lewis said.
~ Duct tape. The girls said one bit through the other’s tape binding her wrists. “We went over all of the duct tape and couldn’t find any chew marks,” Lewis said. And Hinson’s fingerprints were not on the tape.
~ An odd comment. A logbook kept by the 911 dispatcher shows one of the girls noted in her 911 call that Hinson was on a sexual offender registry, which Williams said was an “odd” comment for someone who had just been raped.
But the bottom line was that the jury felt they couldn’t believe any of the stories presented in court: neither the victims’ or the defendant’s.
“Every one of these little things adds up to reasonable doubt,” the jury foreman said. “We couldn’t believe him. We couldn’t believe them.
“We wanted to convict, but the evidence was just not there.”
Sigh…one of the lessons learned from my years in the ER is that everyone lies.
It’s worrisome to think that these two girls could be lying, even more frightening to imagine the consequences if they were telling the truth and Hinson was mistakenly set free.
He is now in federal custody facing weapons charges and may still face life in prison if convicted. But I can’t help but wonder what about those two girls?
What do you think? Would you have ruled differently if you had been on the jury?
