Soldier turned rapist found dead in prison: Officials suspect suicide

2-18-2014 Kentucky:

Steven Dale Green, an Army private convicted of gang-raping an Iraqi 14-year-old girl and killing her family, died in an Arizona prison in what officials suspect was a suicide.

A former soldier, sentenced to life for raping and killing a teenage Iraqi girl and using a shotgun to gun down her family, died in an Arizona prison over the weekend in what officials suspect was a suicide.

Steven Dale Green was the first American soldier charged and convicted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act — a law signed in 2000 that gives the federal government jurisdiction to pursue criminal cases against American citizens and soldiers for acts committed in foreign lands.

The federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman John Stahley said staff members at the federal penitentiary in Tucson, Ariz., found the 28-year-old Green, of Midland, Texas, unresponsive in his cell on Saturday. Stahley said Green's death is being investigated as a suicide.

Death penalty? Inmate suicide precedes child porn indictment

8-9-2011 Virginia:

An inmate, a soldier who allegedly trafficked in violent child pornography, has been found dead in the solitary ward at the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail. Officials say that Willis E. Coley of Alexandria apparently committed suicide August 2, nearly nine months after his arrest and two weeks away from a federal indictment.

A 27-year-old U.S. Army Specialist, Coley was a military photographer and reporter whose work is featured on numerous websites. But it was his use of another online application that brought the charge that preceded his death. ....

During a search of his apartment, Coley allegedly admitted to possessing the gruesome images and directed FBI agents and police officers to an external computer hard drive that contained additional horrors, including one video of a prepubescent girl getting anally raped.

"The child appears to be crying," states the complaint.

According to the Jail's Lt. Col. Roland Beauford, inmates on the four-cell "segregation" unit which housed Coley– along with accused UVA lacrosse killer George Huguely– spend almost all their time, including mealtime, in the cells, which contain a bed, sink, and toilet. Beauford says the inmates are checked every 30 minutes, and a guard observed that Coley was "fine" during one check, but on the next trip discovered him hanging from a torn bedsheet. Beauford says that revival efforts, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use of an automated external defibrillator, were to no avail.

"Our goal is to keep everyone safe," says Beauford, who notes that Coley was not on suicide watch and had previously been "nondisruptive."

Charged with a single count of transporting child pornography, Coley could have faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted. An investigation into his death, conducted by Albemarle County police, is ongoing. ..Source.. by Courteney Stuart

VA- Suicide of local airman may stem from tragic discovery

6-30-2006 Virginia:

A local airman who committed suicide carried a dark secret to his death.

That Air Force sargent was also accused of knowingly exposing a teenager to H.I.V. And he ended his own life before the case could go to court. His body was found Tuesday morning at the Grandview Nature Reserve in the Fox Hill area of Hampton at the end of Beach Road.

According to court records, last year a 15-year-old boy came forward saying for months he was being paid for sex by a man named Brett who he had met over the Internet. The investigation let to Brett Byerly, who confessed to the crime, but not that he was H.I.V. positive.

In this home, police say Brett Byerly paid the 15-year-old boy $100 each time they had sex. Police say it went on from April to July of 2005, around the time he posted this message to his parents: "Get the pork chops ready, I'm coming home".

'Bankers Hill Rapist' Found Dead In Jail Cell

11-23-2004 Arizona:

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A serial rapist convicted of the sexual assaults of four San Diego women committed suicide in an Arizona jail cell.

James Allen Selby, 38, who was dubbed the "Bankers Hill Rapist" by San Diego police three years ago, killed himself Monday.

Selby was found hanging from the window of his jail cell just a few hours before he was scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison in Tucson for raping five women and a teenage girl there in 2001 and 2002. He used a bedsheet to hang himself.

Selby had been connected by a national DNA databank to the rapes and assaults of 14 girls and women in San Diego; Tucson; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Sparks, Nev.; and Norman, Okla. comma between September 1999 and May 2002.

San Diego prosecutors were planning to extradite him after the Arizona sentencing to face charges that he raped four women between July and September of 2001 in Bankers Hill, North Park and Park West.

Selby was accused of entering his San Diego victims' apartments through windows, covering their faces with a towel and assaulting them, according to court records.

Four days after the last San Diego attack, Selby attacked his first victim in Tucson.

Authorities believe Selby was a drifter who came to San Diego in 2001. At the time of his death, he was serving a sentence of 20 years to life for a Colorado rape conviction and faced multiple life sentences in Tucson.

A convicted serial rapist who faced a life sentenced, was found hanged in his jail cell hours before his scheduled court appearance. ..more.. by 10News.com

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Does a rapist deserve a military burial?
1-25-2008 California:

Honoring a convicted sex predator who killed himself behind bars sends a chilling message to victims.

Consider this, if you can bear to. Jenny Bush, a young Arizona woman just graduated from college, walks into her home at the end of a workday and encounters an armed serial rapist, James Allen Selby. Selby, who had entered through a first-floor window, uses duct tape to gag and bind her, and then rapes her at knifepoint before fleeing.

After freeing herself, Bush has the courage to report the crime to police -- and the conviction to pursue legal justice. Following a nationwide manhunt, Selby is apprehended and accused of attacking Bush (who, with three other victims, took the stand at his trial) and at least 10 others, including a 9-year-old girl. In October 2004, Selby is convicted on 27 counts, including armed robbery, rape, kidnapping and attempted murder (for slitting the throat of one of his victims). But hours before facing sentencing, he hangs himself in a Tucson jail.

For Selby's victims and their families, it may have been tempting to believe a certain accountability remained operative: His suicide put a fine point on how little he had left to live for in the wake of his conviction. But his death also granted this serial rapist a moral reprieve that the civilian legal system couldn't. Selby was a Persian Gulf War veteran and so, in accordance with Pentagon policy, was buried with full military honors at Ft. Sill National Cemetery in Oklahoma.

The military policy of allowing honors burials for veterans convicted of rape sends a chilling message to victims: Even the most heinous sexual violence does not trump prior military service. It is a position that is as ethically indefensible as it is inconsistent. In 1997, after Army veteran Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombings, Congress barred veterans convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death or life in prison from being buried with full military honors. Veterans convicted of rape or any other violent crime, however, encounter no such restrictions.

"By honoring those that do not deserve it, we dishonor those who do," Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) said during 1997 hearings on the policy. McVeigh, he said, "was worthy of honor at one time, but he is no longer worthy of honor." Surely the same can be said of Selby.

Jenny Bush's father, Steve Bush, thinks so. Along with several victims' rights organizations, including my own, he has been lobbying to prevent those convicted of the most serious sex crimes from receiving military honors at burial. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), who represents Jenny Bush's district, will introduce "Jenny's Law" in the coming weeks, and Democrat Barbara Boxer of California plans to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

To be clear, changing the military burials policy would be a largely symbolic act. The Department of Justice conservatively estimates that fewer than 40% of all rapes are reported to authorities, demonstrating how infrequently sexual predators are held accountable. The military in particular has a long history of downplaying or decriminalizing the violence against women committed by men in its ranks. A 2003 Veterans Administration report on military sexual trauma estimated that 60% of women in the Reserves and National Guard experienced rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment while on active duty. Defense Department figures show that there were nearly 3,000 accusations of sexual assault in the military in 2006, up 24% from 2005.

The Miles Foundation, a public policy institute specializing in interpersonal violence associated with the armed forces, estimates that only 2% to 3% of offenders receive disciplinary action as serious as court-martial. More commonly, punishment is of the administrative variety, such as extra duty or a letter of reprimand.

It is tempting, and far too easy, to maintain that the military exists in a realm separate from the civilian world. We tell ourselves that the moral ambiguities demonstrated by soldiers who have gone to battle on our behalf cannot be understood by, or be subject to the laws that govern, the rest of us. But the policies our military establishes to respond to violence against women are not merely abstractions. They are expressions of the military's values, and our own.

In the wake of mass violation of women and girls during the conflicts in Kosovo and Rwanda, rape and sexual violence were for the first time codified as distinct crimes under international law. How telling then, and how troubling, that our country's policy on military burials is at odds with international standards the United States worked to establish.

Opinion: Anne K. Ream is founder of The Voices and Faces Project, an advocacy organization that seeks to engage survivors of sexual violence in political and civic life.