Kevin Michael Thornton is a native of southern California , and had turned 18 ten days before his life was changed forever. Like many teenagers, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was caught up with people who were not acting in his best interest.
 
That is not unusual. What happened later, however, was a travesty and miscarriage of justice, and was a grave example of how an innocent young man was changed forever due to rabid prosecutors, shady police officers and unjust laws. 
  

 

 
The rape took place in September 2001, just 3 days before 9/11. Kevin had already planned to graduate from high school early, in December 2001, and after 9/11, he opted to join the Army and serve his country. He was sworn in and was set to leave for basic training in the spring, for a unit that was almost guaranteed to go to the front lines in Iraq. Instead, he was on trial for his life..
 
I pray to God every day with my sincerest thanks for saving Kevin from a life in the military, likely a very dangerous life. I hate that he has gone through this in justice, but what he has suffered through has given him amazing strength. I count my blessings every day that I have such a strong and wonderful man, and that he is stronger as a result of his trials and tribulations. If he had been sent to war, I know he would not be the man he is today.
 
 

 
We are also focusing now on finding a witness who can clear Kevin's name. But we are suffering a lot due to the apathy and the stigma attached to this. Sex offenders are the modern pariahs, and the laws that govern how such people should be treated (even before they are convicted of the crime) are often applied unfairly and by racist and small-minded people.
 
Don't get me wrong. I was a victim of sex abuse as a child, and I worked as a paralegal protecting and defending the rights of those hurt by sexual predators. Sex offender laws are in place for a very good reason, and serve their purpose for protecting society's most vulnerable members. But when the stigma is applied without due process, the system goes awry, public resources are diverted from the real criminals, and innocent people are punished -- in some cases, with their lives and livelihood.
 
I hope that this case will shed light on other injustices, and prevent what happened to Kevin from happening to other people. The attention that will come along with your involvement will help us to show that not all sex offenders are shady child molesters, lurking in the shadows and ready to steal and assault your loved ones. Sometimes, in fact, they are even innocent.

 
-- Kevin’s Story --
 

 
On September 7, 2001, Kevin was riding with some friends to a party, where dozens of underage high school students, most of whom he knew, were drinking and smoking marijuana. One young lady in particular, Sara B., was 17 years old and had never drunk alcohol before. Of course, that didn't stop her from drinking Bacardi 151 straight from the bottle, as well as accepting every can of beer that was offered to her -- which was quite a few. Almost 12 hours later, her blood alcohol level was well above the legal limit for driving. As Sara's friends were leaving, she approached Kevin and asked for a ride home, because she wanted to stay at the party longer. Kevin was not driving, but his friend, Pierre, was driving, and agreed to give Sara a ride home at the end of the party. For the next several hours, Sara continued to drink more alcohol and was seen making out with at least two different young men. When they all left, hours later, Sara was extremely intoxicated, and got in the car with Kevin, Pierre , and another older man named Lofton Rigby.
 
It is important to note here that all three men are African-American, and Sara is white and Hispanic. It is also important to note that Kevin had met Pierre and Sara perhaps twice, in school settings, before this evening, and had never met Lofton before. Lofton is also a predicate felon and known gang member (according to the police).
 
The four left the party, and Sara was making out with Pierre and with Kevin at various times during the party and in the car.. Soon, however, she was too intoxicated to stay awake for very long, and was vomiting profusely -- eventually vomiting blood and passing out in the backseat, with her head on Kevin's lap. Kevin wasn't doing much better, having drank and smoked quite a bit, and was also drifting in and out of consciousness.
 
After leaving the party, the car stopped at a gas station nearby, where Sara woke up and vomited again. Kevin and Lofton went inside the gas station store -- Kevin, to purchase water and get napkins for Sara, and Lofton, to steal a sandwich and a bottle of Nyquil, with the intention of getting still more intoxicated, which he did..
 
Sara was awake and talking by this point, and she and Kevin started making out. He admitted this much (despite that she had just vomited) and said it was consensual. They kissed, and Kevin also sucked and licked on her breasts. Later, she passed out again, as did Kevin, and when he woke up, Pierre had stopped the car at his apartment complex and was returning to the car from his home. Kevin later learned that Pierre had gone inside to get condoms. Pierre drove the party to a secluded location -- a parking lot behind an abandoned firehouse, which is now monitored by security cameras -- and Lofton got out of the passenger's side of the car, opened the door next to Sara, pulled her pants down, and raped her while she was passed out, as he stood in the doorway. Kevin was in and out of consciousness, but later said he vaguely remembered her head bumping his thigh as it rested on his lap. When he woke up, Lofton was back in the front seat, and Sara was still passed out. Pierre and Lofton wanted to go home, so they told Kevin to wake Sara up and find out where she lived. When he did, he realized her pants were still around her legs, and tried to put them back on as he tried to wake her up to find out where her home was. She woke up, saw Kevin, and instantly thought he had assaulted her. She ran away and called the police, as Pierre took Kevin and Lofton to their respective homes.
 
Again, Kevin was 18 years old. He was called by the police and voluntarily came down to the station to meet with the detective. Because he was 18, his mother was not allowed to accompany him, and the detective told him he didn't need a lawyer, and he could refuse to answer questions, but reminded that "it would look really bad if you did." The detective, after hours of berating Kevin and telling him that he had raped the girl and to come clean about it, took a DNA swab and -- about 25 minutes later -- came back and told Kevin his DNA was found on the victim's vagina and that he was guilty.
 
Kevin was very naiive. He was little more than a child, he was not Mirandized, he even believed that a DNA test could be completed in less than half an hour. He said maybe the DNA transferred when he made out with Sara earlier, maybe his hand touched her somewhere lower and that was how. You can tell by his interrogation video that he was so bewildered at the thought of his DNA being on that girl, that he was racking his brain trying to think of how it could have gotten there.
 
Kevin was arrested a few days later, and was assigned a public defender. His lawyer, from the day he was retained, believed Kevin was guilty and tried to get him to accept a plea. He told Kevin, "you're the flea on the dog's back," and that he wasn't who they really wanted to lock up. This attorney also stood idly by while the judge refused to sever Kevin's case from Lofton's, which would have been very important, since all of the evidence was against Lofton. If you read the transcript, it looks like Kevin's name was practically added as an afterthought. Kevin's attorney, Ed Peckham, said that Pierre would be his star witness and say on the stand that Kevin never raped Sara, and that therefore he didn't need to testify in his own defense.
 
In actuality, Pierre plead the Fifth on the stand, because the DA threatened to charge him as an accessory for providing a condom to Lofton and for driving to a secluded area. Kevin's only defense was his high school librarian, who testified as to Kevin's character. Kevin's mother, who is a staunchly Christian and hard-working single mother of four children, was not called to the stand. Neither was Kevin's twin sister, who arguably could have better tesified to Kevin's impeccable character and respect for women.
 
It is important to note here that a defense wasn't technically necessary. In this country, all accused persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, a black man accused of raping a white, underage girl while she's too intoxicated to resist is presumed guilty, and (forgive the language), is screwed if he can't prove himself innocent. That's just what happened here. There was never any evidence, save the victim's testimony (which was shaky at best and changed several times just in the course of the recorded trial transcript), and the testimony of the other accused person, who actually committed the rape.
 
Lofton told the jury that he did have sex with Sara, but said she consented. His DNA was found inside her -- Kevin's was only found on her mouth and breasts, where Kevin had already admitted to touching her, while she was alert.
 
So, Kevin was left with no defense, essentially. After handing down the guilty verdict for both men, the jury wrote a letter to the judge saying they believed they had made a mistake, and they convicted Kevin based on an aiding and abetting clause they didn't understand (and didn't exist in their jury instructions). Still, like he refused to sever the cases prior to the trial, the judge also refused to grant a new trial. Kevin was sent to jail and sentenced to probation, as well as being forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
 
It's important to note that even Kevin's worst detractors thought he was nothing more than a drunken kid who got too tipsy and did something stupid. He was sentenced to only a county year and probation for a violent felony -- in addition to the lifetime scarlet letter of a sex offender. 
 
 

 
The rape took place in September 2001, just 3 days before 9/11. Kevin had already planned to graduate from high school early, in December 2001, and after 9/11, he opted to join the Army and serve his country. He was sworn in and was set to leave for basic training in the spring, for a unit that was almost guaranteed to go to the front lines in Iraq. Instead, he was on trial for his life.
 
While Kevin was in jail, his attorney did not return any of his phone calls from jail, or from Kevin's mother. In California , a convicted person (or, rather, his attorney) has less than three months from the date of the conviction (not the date the motion for a new trial was denied) to appeal. With the time it for the new trial motion, there wasn't very much time to appeal, but Kevin didn't know that. When he met Hillary, now his fiancée, a full four years after his conviction, he told her this horrible story, and said his attorney was appealing his conviction, but he hadn't heard from him in years.
 
Hillary is a paralegal, and informed Kevin that if he hadn't heard anything after four years, he wasn't going to. Kevin checked with Peckham, and in fact, no appeal had been filed, so Kevin and Hillary perused his options and decided to file a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. They laid out all of the facts and law, and we demonstrated that the state did not have an argument for continuing to punish Kevin through probation and sex offender registration.
 
In the meantime, Kevin was arrested for spending the night at Hillary’s home, and was charged with a violation of Penal Code 290, the law which governs California mandatory sex offender registration. He had less than four months left on his original probation sentence. The felony charge was also a "strike" under California’s Three-Strike law, even though the original prosecutor did not add a felony strike for a rape charge. In other words, he was sentenced to a county year and probation for rape, but sleeping with his fiancée was about to get him years in prison. They fought and argued with the DA, eventually getting them to drop the "strike" and sentence Kevin to additional probation time instead of prison or jail. 
 

 

Kevin and Hillary filed the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in San Diego Superior Court -- all 379 pages of legal argument, declarations, affidavits, exhibits and transcripts. In less than two months it was summarily denied, in a decision that flew in the face of years of case law. The judge ruled that Kevin was no longer on probation for rape, but was now serving probation time for the 290 violation, and that probation and sex offender registration did not qualify as "custody." Higher courts disagreed, they found out, so they re-filed in San Diego Appellate Court, and were denied for basically the same reason, although the appeals court judges were kind enough to point out that Kevin should have filed an appeal.
 
They seemed to ignore where the petition discusses the ineptitude of Kevin's attorney, and how one of the ways in which he did a dissservice to his client was by failing to appeal. There was less than 10 days to appeal that decision to the California Supreme Court, so given Kevin’s past history with the petition, and justices not reading our arguments or the law, they decided to pursue other courses of action.
 
They know now that Pierre plead the Fifth Amendment in order to protect himself from being prosecuted as an accessory, a charge which they cannot level against him now. Kevin and Hillary tried to locate him (he went to Los Angeles for college after the trial wrapped up and hasn't been heard from since) and get him to declare that Kevin never raped Sara, and hopefully get a new trial, or re-file the Petition for Habeas Corpus on the grounds that new evidence has been located. However, with the state of wrongful convictions in this country, and particularly in California, even if they all came forward, with the victim, and said Kevin was innocent, it probably still wouldn’t help. Now, they are looking for ways to get Kevin’s probation terminated, and possibly find a way to get him removed from the sex offender registration list.