Iraq war veteran sentenced to 25 years for prostitute rape

A Kansas soldier who served time in Iraq before being charged then convicted of raping and cutting a prostitute has been sentenced to serve the next quarter-century in prison.

The Kansas City Star has more in the article "Man sentenced to 25 years for sexual assault".

Judge Brian Wimes said James D. Baldwin thought he could get away with attacking such victims because most prostitutes would not complain and no one would believe or care if they did.

“That jury cared and this court cared,” Wimes told him.

A jury convicted Baldwin last year of rape, sodomy and two counts of second-degree assault for the Nov. 1, 2004, assault. He originally was charged with attacks on three women that year. Sexual assault charges involving another prostitute were dropped after she died of a drug overdose. A weapons charge is pending against him related to the third woman.

All three women were attacked by a man in a white van. The trial victim and the woman who died both were picked up at Ninth and Genessee streets, driven elsewhere and assaulted in the van.

Baldwin, who lived in Olathe, KS, was a suspect, and he later went into the Army and fought in Iraq, but was sent directly to the county jail after his arrest. This was made possible when Baldwin's DNA was proven to be a match with DNA found on the jeans of the trial victim. That victim also wrote down his license plate.

On Friday, Baldwin told the judge he was innocent and is a nonviolent person. Several members of his church and his wife testified in his favor. Leonardo Balderes said that Baldwin had been active in church and that he had never seen him drink or curse.

Assistant prosecutor Tricia Lacey countered that court records show Baldwin has a history of consorting with prostitutes and once was robbed by one. When he attacked them, she said, he counted on them not telling or no one caring if they did.

The 39-year-old rape victim told someone a week after her attack because she hoped police would stop the van driver from assaulting others, Lacey said, and the woman has since quit drugs and crime and is a productive citizen.

The sentence is not about the victim’s past choices, Lacey said. “It is about the choice he made.” She asked for a 27-year prison term for Baldwin.

Defense lawyer Molly Hastings asked for a sentence of either probation or 10 years because that would tie into the argument than everyone is redeemable. Judge Wimes, however, said that Baldwin failed to show his dark side. "“You were a predator.”