Former Timmonsville police officer Edward Zayas faced up to 30
years in prison when he pleaded guilty last month to two felony
counts of criminal domestic violence and misconduct in office.
Today, he’s free — sentenced to two years’ probation.
The case, victims advocates say, is an example of the difficulty
in getting justice for domestic violence victims.
It shows “the monumental task that we have — that victims groups
have, that the General Assembly has, that we all have — in changing
the culture of domestic violence,” says Trey Walker,spokesman for
Attorney General Henry McMaster.
Advocates say the time for change is well past in South Carolina,
which ranks sixth in the nation in killings per resident of women by
men.
Police first responded to Zayas’ Florence County apartment in
August 2004 when neighbors reported a fight.
When sheriff’s deputies arrived, neither Zayas, who was in his
police uniform, nor his live-in girlfriend, Lumetric Gainey,had
visible injuries. Both claimed nothing had happened. Deputies did
not file a report.
A month later, Gainey called deputies from a relative’s home. The
night before, she said, she fled the apartment she shared with Zayas
after he slapped her and bloodied her mouth as she was trying to
leave.
Deputies found Gainey with a split lip. They took her to the
apartment that she shared with Zayas to help her get her
belongings.
Zayas was there, but the deputies did not arrest him. Instead, a
deputy told Gainey that she should swear out a warrant before a
magistrate if she wanted to press charges.
Later, Walker said, a Florence County investigator followed up
with Gainey, took her statement and got an arrest warrant for Zayas,
charging him with two counts of criminal domestic violence of a high
and aggravated nature and one count of misconduct in office.
In her statement, Gainey also changed her account of the August
incident, saying Zayas had pulled his service weapon and threatened
to kill them both. When Zayas was arrested Dec. 17, he had joined
the Lake City Police Department.
Florence County Solicitor Ed Clements handed the case off to the
attorney general’s office. He said he did so because his office and
the local police departments work closely together — a common
practice when the defendant is a police officer.
McMaster’s office dispatched assistant attorney general Curtis
Pauling to prosecute the case.
Zayas’ lawyer, Steve Wikula, tried to convince Pauling to drop
the first assault charge because there was no physical evidence, and
Gainey had changed her story, said Walker, the attorney general’s
spokesman.
Had that charge been dropped, the misconduct in office charge
likely would have been lost, too, because Zayas was only in uniform
and on duty during the August incident. The attorney general
refused.
Wikula declined to comment for this story. Efforts to reach Zayas
were unsuccessful.
Zayas went before Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper on Sept. 22
and pleaded guilty to all three counts.
Pauling did not offer a recommended sentence urging prison time,
as prosecutors sometimes do, and Cooper did not ask for a sentencing
recommendation, as judges sometimes do.
Cooper sentenced Zayas to three years in prison but suspended
that sentence in favor of two years probation.
What’s wrong with the story?
Plenty, victims advocates say:
• Much was made of the fact that
Gainey changed her story. That is not uncommon in domestic violence
cases, especially when the victim is questioned in the presence of
the batterer. Victims often are too intimidated to speak up.
Kathy Andrews, communications director for the Pee Dee Coalition
Against Domestic and Sexual Assault, said Gainey faced a worrisome
situation: Her abuser was a police officer, in uniform. A police
officer, in uniform, was there to question them. Would some bond
between law enforcement officers protect Zayas?
Efforts to reach Gainey were unsuccessful last week.
Gainey’s decision to later accuse Zayas of assault in the first
incident opened the door for a defense attorney to question her
veracity, had the case gone to trial. Was she intimidated when
questioned initially — or did she make up the allegation later?
Walker said the attorney general’s office decided that, had the
case gone to trial, the first charge “probably would have been the
weakest. That charge, they might not have convicted on that
one.”
• Deputies did not make an arrest
in the second incident despite Gainey’s split lip and her accusation
that Zayas had hit her.
“You find an offender, and there are officers who actually go to
the scene and leave the scene? That is outrageous,” said Andrews,
the Pee Dee coalition spokeswoman.
Florence County Sheriff Kenney Boone said he was not familiar
with the case, which occurred before he took office in January.
Asked what his department’s policy is if a deputy finds a woman
bleeding, apparently at the hands of her boyfriend, Boone said, “We
would definitely take action.”
Sheriff’s Capt. Todd Tucker said when Gainey called the police —
about 15 hours after she said Zayas assaulted her — officers
encouraged her to press charges and photographed her injuries.
But state law says police must make an arrest if “physical
manifestations of injury” to a victim are visible.
• Cooper sentenced Zayas to
probation instead of prison time, a sentence Laura Hudson, public
policy coordinator for the S.C. Victims Assistance Network, called
“weak.”
That’s especially true, Hudson said, because of Zayas’ work as a
police officer.
“If you are holding yourself out as an upholder of the law,” she
said, “we ought to have a higher standard for you.”
Hudson does not blame Pauling or the attorney general’s office
for not pushing for jail time.
“Does it bother me that the guy doesn’t get time? Yeah,” Hudson
said. “But I lay that at the foot of the judge.”
Efforts to reach Cooper for comment were unsuccessful.
Walker said the attorney general’s goal “was to get those
convictions on the record” — whether Zayas got prison time or
not.
Still, he said, “we were disappointed with the leniency of this
sentence.”
Zayas’ sentence prevents him from being a police officer and from
owning a firearm. He also must attend a program for convicted
batterers.
McMaster and others are working to curb the state’s domestic
violence problem. Lawmakers last year adopted tougher penalties for
domestic violence, which take effect in January.
McMaster has recruited a network of private lawyers willing to
volunteer as prosecutors in misdemeanor domestic violence cases in
magistrates’ courts.
McMaster and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., also helped the state
land a grant to pay for more prosecutors for domestic violence
cases.
In Florence County, Sheriff Boone’s office has a dedicated
domestic violence investigator. Other counties have similar
jobs.
But for Andrews, of the Pee Dee coalition, the Zayas case
illustrates the difficulties that victims and the state face in
trying to curb domestic violence.
“This is typical of the good-old-boy network in the South,”
Andrews said. “It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.
“Everyone here that I work with have been in situations like
this, where the perpetrator may be a figure of authority and the
sentence is light. And we wonder why this is happening?”
Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com
