Jurors return guilty verdict after an hour of deliberation

By Jordan Fouts

GOSHEN — It took a jury less than an hour to convict an Elkhart man of strangling a woman to death in her home in March 2018.

Benford Davis, 51, was found guilty Thursday of killing Sherry Houston, 57. She was found in the living room of her Prairie Street home on March 26, 2018, and Davis was arrested on a warrant charging him in her death one year later.

The verdict was read in court an hour after jurors were sent to deliberate. Sentencing was set for Sept. 26.

He faces up to 65 years in prison.

‘Hold him accountable’

The jury reached its decision after hearing two days of testimony from investigators and forensic scientists. They also heard from friends and relatives of Houston’s, who described the tumultuous relationship she was in and the change they saw come over her after she got involved with Davis.

“Sherry Houston was full of life. She was kind, she was generous, she was a mother hen,” Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker said in her closing arguments, a photo of a smiling Houston on the screen behind her. “Her weakness was loving a man who was fatal to her, and letting him into her safe, locked home.”

She pointed to five areas of evidence that she wanted jurors to base their decision on. Those included the depiction of their relationship and how Davis treated Houston, and the amount of phone contact between the two – there were as many as 500 exchanges a month, though his attempts to contact her abruptly stopped after March 25, 2018.

Becker also highlighted Davis’s own statements, many of which she said were made to cover his tracks, as well as the fact that he left town and went to Indianapolis without any apparent attempt to tell Houston about it. She also pointed to the presence of his DNA on Houston’s body and clothing, including under her fingernails.

“You probably have a pretty good visual of the defendant choking the life out of Sherry, her hands doing whatever they could, trying to stop her attacker,” Becker said. “Sherry’s weakness allowed his strength to kill her. Please hold him accountable.”

‘That should create doubt’

In his closing remarks, Jeffrey Majerek, one of Davis’ attorneys, questioned the depiction of Houston as a victim of domestic abuse.

“After all that, she called him 196 times. They’ll say this was some kind of domestic violence syndrome, but … she put up locks on her door but invited him over,” he said. “The guy chokes you and you call him, he steals your gun apparently and you call him, and you keep calling him. That should create doubt in your mind.”

He also challenged some of the testimony from Houston’s friends, asking why they hadn’t mentioned a past incident of Davis choking her sooner, or a restraining order she may have taken out against him. He questioned whether they were credible witnesses.

Majerek also asked whether Houston’s change in personality couldn’t be attributed to another life event, such as seeing her sister go to jail. He said a lot of things the jury heard, like Davis’ calls to Houston suddenly stopping or his DNA being found on her body, could have more than one reasonable explanation, and characterized a lot of the evidence as circumstantial.

Davis also did a bad job of trying to flee, if that was his intent, Majerek said, since he used his own name to buy the bus ticket. Majerek suggested the reason he left town was because he simply gave up on the relationship.

“You might be sitting there thinking he wasn’t the best boyfriend, you might be thinking he was an ass, but that doesn’t mean he murdered her,” he said.

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Physical signs of strangulation in cases of domestic violence are not as obvious as we’re led to believe—so victims can suffer lethal related injuries and are seven times likelier to later die of homicide.

By Nicole Wetsman

Yeardley Love, a 22-year-old lacrosse player at the University of Virginia, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in May 2010. The attack that killed her wasn’t the first—he’d assaulted her before. To Kathryn Laughon, a forensic nurse examiner and professor of nursing at UVA, one detail stands out: During one earlier incident, Love’s ex-boyfriend put his hands around her neck and strangled her. People saw it happen, but didn’t report it at the time—it got lumped in with the other episodes, and wasn’t recognized anything more or less violent than everything else going on.

But strangulation is a particularly dangerous type of abuse: It’s hard to detect, and it’s a major risk factor for homicide. If someone is strangled by an intimate partner and survives, they’re seven times likelier to later be killed by that partner. “Anyone willing and able to cut off someone’s air supply is a highly dangerous person,” said Jaquelyn Campbell, an expert on intimate partner violence and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. All abuse is vicious, but most abusers don’t put their hands around their victim’s neck—if someone is inflicting harm in that way, the threat reaches another level. It can kill immediately, and victims can suffer strokes, brain injuries, or aneurysms days or weeks after the initial incident.

On a recent episode of Euphoria, a character, Nate, strangled his girlfriend, Maddy, leaving rings of dark bruises on her neck. Despite how strangulation may be portrayed on TV dramas, where victims immediately have telling dark marks around their throats, it often only leaves small physical signs, and many emergency rooms don’t screen for strangulation. Because the signs are subtle and easily missed if a doctor isn’t looking for them, both victims and law enforcement can minimize the incidents. Some states have policies called lethality assessment programs specifically direct law enforcement to ask victims of domestic violence if they’ve been choked or strangled, to predict cases likely to escalate to homicide, but they’re not universal. That leaves strangulation underrecognized, underreported, and undertreated.

Laughon is in the initial stages of a project to more clearly establish what strangulation looks like, with the goal of helping people working in emergency rooms know what types of physical evidence to look for, and to give expert witnesses stronger credibility when testifying about that evidence in court.

“As a forensic nurse, I’m often balancing a role of being a patient advocate,” Laughon said. “At the same time, I am compelled to go to court to provide an objective testimony—which I want to do in the most scientific way possible. The more objective and evidence-based I can be, the better.”

The more common signs of strangulation are a constellation of both external and internal ones, including hoarseness, swelling and cuts in the mouth, and tiny spots caused by blood under the skin called petechiae. But they can be negligible, which makes them difficult to document. “Whoever does the examination has to really know what they’re looking for,” and many emergency physicians don’t, Campbell said.

When strangulation happens in the context of a larger assault, those specific signs often aren’t pulled out of an overall report, and they’re easy for people who haven’t been specifically trained to miss. The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention runs sessions for medical professionals, and institute head Gael Strack says that for many, this is the first time they’ve been given this information.

“If your voice is hoarse and your eyes are red and you’re having trouble catching your breath—you’ve probably been screaming, you’re upset, so that doesn’t stand out,” Laughon said. Petechiae can be hidden along the hairline or in the ear. It’s also harder to see some of the physical signs of strangulation on darker skin, particularly without a proper light source—and Black women experience particularly high rates of domestic violence. “Racial equity is a problem, as it is in all areas of the criminal justice system,” Laughton said.

The subtleties of the physical signs make it more challenging for experts like Laughon to link them to strangulation in the courtroom. “All I can do now is talk about what we know from past research from when people are strangled,” she said, “and say that those are consistent with the history someone gave me.”

Laughon is building a database of medical records from victims of domestic violence who did and did not report strangulation. She hopes to achieve more clarity on the physical symptoms that most strongly indicate strangulation by including at least 10,000 cases of domestic violence. The data does not include information about skin tone, just race, so Laughon isn’t sure how much information she’ll be able to pull out about injuries on darker skin—but she said she’ll address that question to whatever degree possible.

“People don’t always tell us that they were strangled, or they might not remember—after a trauma it’s hard to have accurate information,” Laughton said. “If we have a better sense of what’s a strong marker of strangulation, it would help follow up in that way.” That information would bolster the scientific foundation for courtroom testimony. “It adds another layer of evidence. It gives me the ability, when I sit on the stand, to say not just what I saw, but the degree of certainty I have that this is associated with strangulation,” Laughon said.

An emergency room physician who had more information on the physical evidence of strangulation might be able to better identify a case. “It could have an incredible impact,” Campbell said. “Our trauma and emergency departments are waiting for this kind of data. Because [Laughon] is a forensic nurse, she will be able to present the findings in a way that’s persuasive.”

Getting this information into the hands of physicians, law enforcement, and prosecutors is important: in places with lethality assessment programs, rates of intimate partner homicides drop. But increasing awareness of the danger of strangulation in the general population is equally important. Many victims don’t report domestic violence, and many victims don’t realize how dangerous strangulation can be—and how important it is to seek care and be monitored for signs of brain injury or stroke afterwards.

“If someone is strangled, it’s serious. It needs to be taken seriously,” Laughon said. “I always go back to Yeardley Love. He strangled her, and she said she was OK, and no one called the police,” she said, recalling the witnesses. “They were just kids—they didn’t know. People need to know.”

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline can provide crisis intervention, information, and referrals to resources. You can contact them via their website or call 1-800-799-7233.

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JEFFERSONVILLE — The trial has started for a man accused of killing and mutilating 46-year-old Tammy Jo Blanton nearly five years after police were called to Blanton’s home for a welfare check.

Jury selection is underway in Hamilton County in the trial of 38-year-old Joseph Oberhansley, charged with the murder of his ex-girlfriend in Jeffersonville. Hamilton County jurors are being chosen to hear the case, which will be tried in Clark County, due to pretrial publicity. Opening statements are expected to start Wednesday afternoon in Clark County Circuit Court No. 4.

What police saw inside the home at 329 Locust St. in the early hours of Sept. 11, 2014, was nothing short of horrifying. First responding officers entered the home and noted large amounts of blood on the bathroom floor. The tub was covered with a vinyl camping tent.

When detectives pulled back the tent, they discovered Blanton’s body, which had sustained deep cuts and part of which was missing.

According to the report filed by Jeffersonville police, Oberhansley confessed that he had broken into Blanton’s home and into the bathroom, where she had locked herself. He admitted to killing her with a knife and consuming part of her organs.

But Oberhansley has since said in court hearings that he’s innocent. He is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse, rape and residential entry. If convicted, he could face life without parole.

It won’t be the first time Oberhansley’s fate is in the hands of a court. In 2000, he was sentenced to no more than 15 years in a Utah State Prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the death of 17-year-old Sabrina Elder.

Sometime after he was released from prison in July 2012, he made is way to Indiana, under the supervision of the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision.

UTAH HOMICIDE

On Dec. 9, 1998, then-17-year-old Oberhansley shot the mother of his newborn child five times in the head and arm, according to court records from Salt Lake County, Utah. He also shot his mother, Brenda Lee Self, once in the back and once in the arm.

According to a 1999 report from Utah news outlet Deseret News, Oberhansley was unprovoked when he walked into his grandmother’s home in West Valley, Utah, and shot the two women. Oberhansley survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Just over one year later, Oberhansley signed an agreement in which he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempted homicide. He faced one to 15 years in prison and was paroled July 10, 2012, by the Utah Board of Pardons, according to newsgathering partner Wave 3 News.

By the time he had his first known encounter with police in Southern Indiana, he was still on parole in Utah.

CLARK COUNTY ARREST FOR STRANGULATION

Around 4:30 a.m. on March 10, 2013, Jeffersonville police responded to an apartment above a bar on East Chestnut Street. They were greeted by a woman screaming “he is killing my boyfriend,” the police report shows.

The “he” the woman was referring to was Oberhansley, who police observed was naked and choking another man to near unconsciousness. Officers gave several verbal commands before Oberhansley released the victim. But when police say he refused orders to lay on the floor with his hands out, officers tased Oberhansley twice and secured handcuffs around his wrists.

On the way to the Clark County Jail, Oberhansley told police the man and woman had tried to rob him and that he was the one in fear for his life. He also said he was afraid “he was going to have to kill” the man police saw him choking.

Oberhansley, the victim and the victim’s girlfriend had conflicting accounts of what happened that night. The woman said Oberhansley had followed her home from a bar, but she later admitted that she willingly had Oberhansley drive her home. Oberhansley said the woman invited him to her place.

Oberhansley was arrested for strangulation and resisting law enforcement that day and released from jail on bond three days later. He wasn’t formally charged until July 2013, but Indiana statute allows the prosecution up to a year from the arrest to file charges. If a person is held in custody, prosecution must file charges within 72 hours, not including weekends.

Almost exactly one year after he was charged, Oberhansley was arrested again.

CLARK COUNTY POLICE CHASE

On July 21, 2014, police say Oberhansley led officers on a multi-state pursuit. It began at Nachand Lane and 10th Street, where an officer pulled behind Oberhansley’s blue Chevy truck, which had been reported for reckless driving.

The officer, who saw Oberhansley’s car cross the yellow lines, activated his emergency lights. Oberhansley reportedly drove through a red light and refused to stop. The pursuit continued north on Interstate 65, onto Veterans Parkway in Clarksville and back to Jeffersonville.

Police deployed spike strips at Foxglove and Larkspur, causing the truck’s front passenger tire to blow out before the truck crashed into a fire hydrant. Oberhansley then jumped out of his truck and began to “chew vigorously on his left wrist,” according to the police report, which also states he refused commands, got back into his truck and managed to drive off.

Police pursued Oberhansley through Jeffersonville and onto southbound I-65 into Louisville. The Louisville Metro Police Department took over the pursuit and were eventually able to apprehend Oberhansley. He was charged in Clark County with criminal recklessness and resisting law enforcement. The case, like the 2013 strangulation case, is ongoing.

On July 31, 2014, 10 days after the pursuit, Oberhansley was released on a $500 bond. Roughly six weeks later, he would be arrested and charged in Tammy Jo Blanton’s murder.

He has been held without bond since his Sept. 11, 2015, arrest following the discovery of Blanton’s body. Though the pending case is in Clark County, the defendant was transferred to the Indiana Department of Correction Nov. 15, 2015, to await trial after the judge granted the defense’s request to do so.

— Staff reporter Aprile Rickert and former staffer Elizabeth DePompei compiled this story.

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An administrative judge had earlier recommended that Pantaleo be terminated. Garner’s death, which sparked national protests, occurred on July 17, 2014.

By David K. Li

Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer seen on video using a chokehold during Eric Garner’s deadly arrest five years ago ⁠— sparking mass protests ⁠and becoming a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement — was fired by the department on Monday.

NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill announced he’ll enforce an administrative judge’s recommendation, made this month, that Pantaleo be terminated over the July 17, 2014, confrontation as Garner was being arrested on Staten Island for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

Pantaleo, who has been with the NYPD since 2006, was suspended as soon as that departmental verdict was reached, in keeping with long-standing practice when there is a recommendation for firing. The 13-year veteran had been on desk duty as his case made its way through legal and administrative circles.

“It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer,” O’Neill announced.

“There are absolutely no victors here today, not the Garner family, not the community at large and certainly not the courageous men and women of the police department who put their own lives on the line every single day in service to people of this great city.”

O’Neill said Pantaleo was properly making an arrest, up to the point where he had Garner on the ground but still had a forearm on the man’s throat.

“Had I been in Officer Pantaleo’s situation I may have made similar mistakes,” O’Neill said. “I would have wished I had released my grip before it became a chokehold.”

O’Neill also heaped blame on Garner himself, saying he was wrong to have resisted arrest.

“Every time I watch that video I say to myself … ‘to Mr. Garner, don’t do it. Comply. Officer Pantaleo, don’t do it,'” the commissioner said.

“I say that about the decisions made by both Officer Pantaleo and Mr. Garner. But none of us can’t take back our decisions.”

Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, said his client “is disappointed, upset but has a lot of strength and wants to go forward.”

Pantaleo plans to fight his termination under Article 78, a New York civil code that sets a path for challenges to rulings by a government agency.

“After the Article 78, if we need to appeal beyond that we will,” London said. “We are looking for him to get his job back.”

If the termination stands, Pantaleo would still be entitled to all pension benefits he had accrued through Monday, according to O’Neill.

And O’Neill admitted that if he were still an officer in uniform — as he’d been for 34 years before taking charge of America’s biggest municipal police force — he too would be upset with this decision.

“I’ve been a cop a long time and if I was still a cop, I’d probably be mad at me. ‘You’re not looking out for us,’ but I am,” O’Neill said.

“It’s my responsibility as police commissioner to look out for the city and certainly to look out for New York City police officers. They took this job to make a difference. You all know the city has been transformed — had a lot of help, but it’s the cops out there right now and the thousands that have come before who continue to make this city safe.”

Emerald Snipes Garner, one of Eric Garner’s daughter, thanked the family’s supporters and O’Neill for his decision on Monday.

“Commissioner O’Neill, I thank you for doing the right thing,” she told reporters during a press conference at the Harlem headquarters of the National Action Network. “I truly, sincerely thank you for firing the officer, regardless to however you came up to your decision. You finally made the decision that should’ve been made by five years ago.”

Garner’s loved ones and NAN’s founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is also an MSNBC host, said they’ll push lawmakers to make the chokehold illegal, and not just a violation of any individual department’s internal policy.

“We can’t talk about what happened in the past,” Emerald Snipes Garner said. “We can only talk about what we’re gonna do to move forward.”

And while O’Neill said he found fault in Garner’s actions, Emerald Snipes Garner said she had a different take: “When I watch the video, I see my father being killed.”

Pantaleo’s termination seemed to be in the cards for weeks.

The NYPD’s No. 2 official, First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker, accepted the judge’s ruling that Pantaleo should be fired, two law enforcement officials familiar with the case told NBC New York last week.

Tucker reviewed the findings and had passed them on to O’Neill for his final review, sources said. Tucker reportedly found no new evidence to reverse the judge’s decision.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the NYPD’s administrative process led to the correct result.

“We watched a fair and impartial trial. We watched an objective decision by a deputy commissioner of the NYPD, affirmed by the first deputy commissioner and affirmed by the police commissioner,” the mayor told reporters at City Hal. “Justice has been done. And that decision has resulted in the termination of officer Pantaleo.”

The mayor conceded O’Neill’s ruling might not mean much to Garner’s loved ones.

“For the Garner family, which has gone through so much agony for so long, and has waited this long just to have one trial finally conclude with a decision, I hope today brings some small measure of closure,” the mayor added.

The New York Civil Liberties Union fell well short of praising O’Neill’s ruling.

“It may be tempting to call this justice, but it’s not,” it said in a statement. “We cannot lower our standards just because the NYPD has kept the bar so low.”

Patrick J. Lynch, president of the city’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, last week warned O’Neill that Pantaleo’s termination would be a blow to the morale of his members.

Minutes after the police commissioner announced his ruling on Monday, Lynch said O’Neill had permanently lost the confidence of officers on the beat.

“The NYPD will remain rudderless and frozen, and Commissioner O’Neill will never be able to bring it back,” Lynch said in a statement.

“Now it is time for every police officer in this city to make their own choice. We are urging all New York City police officer to proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed ‘reckless’ just for doing their job. We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly jeopardizing our careers or personal safety.”

Monday’s announcement by O’Neill marked the first formal, government action that went in favor of Garner’s loved ones in their yearslong pursuit of criminal, civil or career consequences for Pantaleo.

A Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo and, this summer, the Justice Department said it would not bring federal civil rights or criminal charges against him.

Pantaleo was among two officers who were initially confronting Garner, 43, about his alleged sale of cigarettes in an incident captured on bystander Ramsey Orta’s cellphone.

As back-up arrived, Pantaleo jumped on Garner’s back, wrapped his left forearm around the suspect’s neck and rode him to the pavement.

Four other officers came to assist Pantaleo, as he shoved Garner’s face into the sidewalk, all while the 6-foot-2, roughly 400-pound man repeatedly pleaded: “I can’t breathe.”

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York ruled Garner’s death a homicide based on compression of his neck and chest. Though the forensic investigators also said Garner’s acute and chronic bronchial asthma, obesity and heart disease were contributing factors.

About five months after Garner’s death, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo based on the evidence presented by the office of then-District Attorney Dan Donovan.

The borough’s top prosecutor, Donovan, insisted he presented all the evidence — though transcripts of grand jury proceedings have never been released.

And earlier this summer, federal prosecutors ended their five-year-long probe of the matter and elected not to pursue any civil rights charges against Pantaleo.

Attorney General William Barr made the final decision not to charge Pantaleo, choosing to follow recommendations of Brooklyn prosecutors, a senior Justice Department official told NBC News in July.

At Pantaleo’s departmental trial, his defense insisted the officer did not employ a chokehold, which is banned by the NYPD. Instead, Pantaleo’s defense argued he was using “seatbelt” move, wrapping arms around a suspect’s shoulders to bring an arrest.

“I can’t breathe” became a chant for protests that summer and beyond for Black Lives Matter activists.

Garner’s death came less than a month before Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.

Garner and Brown’s deaths became flash points for coast-to-coast protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Staffers working for members of the Congressional Black Caucus staged a walkout on Dec. 11, 2014, in protest of Garner and Brown’s deaths — and the lack of local prosecution of the police officers involved.

Earlier this summer, New York City reached a $5.9 million settlement with Garner’s family, which had sued for wrongful death.

“Today is a day of reckoning, but it can also be a day of reconciliation,” O’Neill said. “We must move forward together as one city determined to secure safety for all New Yorkers and safety for every police officer working daily to protect all of us.”

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By Zack McDonald