NORMAN, Oklaoma – Rebecca Hogue’s prosecution, conviction and sentence match into a bigger sample of how Oklahoma incarcerates girls and folks normally, specialists say.
Hogue was convicted Nov. 3, 2021 in Cleveland County District Court docket of first-degree homicide underneath Oklahoma’s “failure to guard” legislation, which states mother and father or guardians might be convicted of kid abuse in the event that they knew or moderately ought to have identified in regards to the abuse. Hogue has maintained she didn’t know her then-boyfriend, Christopher Trent, was abusing her 2-year-old son earlier than he killed him.
Regardless of the Oklahoma Division of Corrections recommending Hogue not spend any time in jail, Choose Michael Tupper sentenced her to 16 months of incarceration — one month for every remaining 12 months her son would have been in her authorized care. Trent couldn’t be charged or convicted as a result of he hanged himself after killing Hogue’s son.
In keeping with the American Civil Liberties Union, about considered one of each 4 girls convicted of failure to guard is given a harsher sentence than the abuser. Even when Trent might be sentenced, prison justice lecturers and advocacy teams argue the prison justice system in Oklahoma and america was stacked in opposition to Hogue to start with.
In keeping with 2019 estimates, Oklahoma incarcerates 123 of each 100,000 girls within the state. Till current years, the state had the best proportion of girls incarcerated than some other state, and america incarcerates extra individuals than any nation on the earth.
As of 2013, greater than half the ladies coming into Oklahoma’s jail system have been arrested for a drug offense.
“Oklahoma’s legal guidelines and the way they’re enforced do certainly set girls as much as fail,” stated Susan Sharp, a College of Oklahoma professor who makes a speciality of prison justice. “I feel additionally that our standing so far as the standing of girls within the state, we’re just about close to the underside. Girls have low training, low well being care, and the whole lot that’s vital for fulfillment, we’re low in, after which we’re excessive in incarceration, and I don’t assume that’s any coincidence in any respect.”
Whereas medication could not have been a consider Hogue’s case, one other prevalent challenge in Oklahoma — antagonistic childhood experiences — was. In 2017, the state ranked first within the nation in antagonistic childhood experiences, the Tulsa World reported. Hostile childhood experiences embrace bodily or sexual abuse, home violence, divorce, parental incarceration or substance abuse.
The U.S. Division of Justice has famous a excessive inhabitants of incarcerated individuals have skilled baby neglect, abuse or different types of traumatic stress.
Hogue survived home violence from her father, and he or she had a service business job when Ryder was killed.
Nonetheless She Rises, and Oklahoma nonprofit that helps indigent girls, says an absence of employment alternatives contributes to girls’s excessive incarceration charge.
Sharp, who has introduced at Oklahoma legislative periods, argues state lawmakers aren’t sufficiently educated to diligently move legal guidelines. In consequence, lawmakers move legal guidelines that incarcerate girls, she stated.
To correctly weigh contributing components in circumstances like Rebecca’s, Sharp instructed state businesses outdoors the prison justice system should be given sources.
“Normally, within the failure to guard circumstances, you might have a feminine who’s being abused. If we had the manpower to go in and examine it correctly, then maybe we may present sources and help to assist girls get out of these sorts of conditions,” she stated.
Hogue’s case attracts parallels to different failure to guard circumstances in Oklahoma.
Tondalao Corridor served 15 years at Mabel Bassett for failing to report that her baby’s father and then-boyfriend had abused their two youngest kids. She was initially given 30 years in jail for permitting baby abuse after she took them to the hospital. Her boyfriend bought two years for the abuse.
Corridor is considered one of greater than a dozen girls given harsher sentences than the boys who abused their kids underneath Oklahoma’s failure to guard legislation.
In Hogue’s and Corridor’s circumstances, each girls maintained they didn’t consider their associate was abusing their kids, however in the end took the most important fall for his or her companions’ actions.
One other similarity is that Corridor and Hogue have been each despatched to Mabel Bassett Correctional Middle, considered one of three Oklahoma Division of Corrections amenities particularly designated for girls.
A Bureau of Justice statistics report issued in 2012 — close to the center of Corridor’s sentence — confirmed greater than 15% of girls surveyed on the jail reported sexual abuse or rape from one other inmate. It was the best charge of sexual abuse within the nation for feminine correctional amenities.
A number of the contributing components included a higher-than-average proportion of inmates who have been undereducated, experiencing excessive psychological stress or psychological problems. On prime of that, 3.5% of inmates surveyed within the report stated workers on the correctional middle sexually assaulted them.
Division of Corrections officers selected to not testify at a 2014 listening to in regards to the report as a result of 11 girls had filed a lawsuit accusing three guards of sexual assault.
Stacey Wright, who has spoken to Hogue all through her sentence, stated Hogue has struggled at Mabel Bassett.
“She’s been in a psychological well being disaster since this occurred, after which to have that compounded by what DA [Greg] Mashburn and ADA [Pattye] Excessive have completed to her, she’s simply been two years within the worst form of trauma with out the form of help that she wants to have the ability to put her life again collectively.”
This legislative session, Oklahoma lawmakers expanded the state’s definition of prison culpability utilizing virtually similar language to the phrase that put Hogue behind bars.
On April 1, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed Senate Invoice 6, which says an individual might be charged with accent to homicide in the event that they conceal or help an individual who they know or moderately ought to have identified killed somebody. The phrase “moderately ought to have identified” allowed a jury to convict Hogue of first-degree homicide, regardless that she has maintained she didn’t learn about abuse.
The invoice pushes Oklahoma nearer consistent with states like Texas, which has the legislation of events. The legislation of events permits prosecutors to cost somebody current at any crime with the identical offense as the one that dedicated the crime underneath sure circumstances.
