When a detective has sex with ...

What happens when a detective has sexual relations with a woman who is in the court system and who legally must answer to him?

Would official law enforcement authority over a person constitute a barrier to such relations?

A former Lincoln County (Mo.) Sheriff’s Department detective pleaded guilty on July 10 in federal court in St. Louis. I guess they had him dead to rights. He was at risk of a life sentence. Although he was to be sentenced on October 18, it wasn't until December 14 that he was sentenced - to ten years in prison.

His job had been monitoring women defendants in a drug court program. He was charged with violating the constitutional rights of five women.

Take a look at the charges to which he pled guilty:

- deprivation of rights under color of law including aggravated sexual abuse (2 counts),
- deprivation of rights under color of law including kidnapping (1 count), and
- deprivation of rights under color of law including sexual contact (2 counts).

What kind of power could he have exerted over those women? Could he get them to do something he wanted them to do, by making them some kind of promise? Or a threat of some type? Key words in the charges, no doubt, were under color of law.

This case was a Federal case. I wonder if the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department could have handled it differently. Could the sheriff have handled the matter administratively, say with only a 30-day suspension, and kept it out of public view? Could the sheriff have filed charges against his own errant deputy and maybe tried to keep it in Lincoln County? How did it get to the Federal level?

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch