‘He got off clean.’ Sexual assault survivors testify during Columbus sentencing in rape cases
A Columbus man alleged to be a serial rapist before a jury acquitted him on most of his charges will serve more than 30 years in prison for the few offenses on which he was convicted.
Judge Ben Land sentenced Jamarquis Javier Hooks on Friday to spend 32 years in prison and the rest of his life on probation after being found guilty of rape and two misdemeanor counts of simple battery.
Hooks’ sentencing hearing was marked by tears of outrage from some of the women who testified against him, as they expressed their shock that the jury found him not guilty of raping them.
“I feel like justice wasn’t served in this case,” said one woman, 21. “I feel like he got off clean.”
The Ledger-Enquirer does not name victims of sexual assault in order to protect their identity.
During the trial, Hooks’ defense attorneys had implied she might be a prostitute, because Hooks had picked her up at a Victory Drive motel. Addressing the court Friday, her mother blasted that inference.
“My daughter was not and has never been a prostitute,” she said. “I have no doubt in my mind that he raped my daughter in that car that day.”
The charges
Hooks, 28, went to trial Feb. 18 on four counts of rape, four of aggravated assault, and one each of aggravated sodomy and attempted rape.
Five women testified that he assaulted them in the same secluded spot in the Pine Meadow Estates trailer park at 3434 St. Marys Road. Four said he raped them and a fifth said he tried to rape her before she got away.
The jury of eight women and four men deliberated 11 hours over two days before announcing its verdict Feb. 25. The result was a mixed outcome for Hooks’ attorneys, law partners William Kendrick and Mark Shelnutt, as their client still faced a maximum sentence of life in prison on the single rape conviction.
Assistant District Attorney Veronica Hansis told jurors Hooks communicated with the women on a dating app called Tagged or on Facebook, and arranged a meeting where he showed up in his grandmother’s Chevy Malibu.
Once he got them in the car, he drove to Pine Meadows, parked between two storage buildings and demanded sex. If the women did not comply, he attacked them, usually placing them in a choke hold, clamping their necks in the crook of his arm and squeezing, she said.
Before he abruptly turned violent, Hooks was amiable and charming, some of the women said.
“He was caring and funny until he warped into a monster,” said a woman who was 23 in 2018. “His mouth twisted and became an evil smirk.”
One of seven witnesses testifying at Hooks’ sentencing, she said she needed months of therapy, and still has nightmares. “You are a true monster,” she told Hooks.
Two sex crimes investigators also testified.
“He went from being this nice guy and flipped as soon as they said ‘no,’” Sgt. Amanda Hogan said of Hooks’ sexual demands. Of the women, she said, “I believe 100 percent that the jury let them down, every one of them.”
She asked Land to sentence Hooks to life in prison, “so these women can see that there is justice in this system, whether the jury believed them or not.”
Sgt. Tom Shelton pointed out that few women report sexual assault, and even fewer take their cases to trial. “I truly believe that he is a predator and that he will never stop,” he told Land.
‘Blaming the jury’
Kendrick said the prosecution witnesses were just “blaming the jury.”
Hooks had no criminal history, and the jury decided its verdict based on the evidence it had: “We can feel how we want to feel about it, but we have to respect it,” he said. “That jury did a good job.”
Hansis said the women weren’t lawyers rationalizing the legal system. “They’re angry; they’re upset, and rightfully so,” she said.
That the defense would insinuate one wanted money for sex shows why victims don’t want to prosecute, she said: They know their character will be put on trial, and they will be called promiscuous or prostitutes: “This is why they don’t come forward.”
She also sought a life sentence. “Jamarquis Hooks is a predator,” she said. “If any case calls for the maximum, I believe this one does…. He is a convicted rapist and he deserves the maximum.”
Land was unwilling to go that far, saying he had to respect the verdict and the jury system: “I cannot turn a blind eye to what the jury found.”
Though he would not give Hooks the maximum penalty, he loaded Hooks’ lifelong probation with special conditions:
He ordered Hooks to register as a sex offender; to have no contact with minors other than his own children, should he have any; to date no one who has children under 18; to access no pornographic material; to rent no post office box; to maintain a record of his travels; and to have no contact with his accusers or their families, among other conditions.