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Officials look into alleged assault in jail
By Bill Hankins
The Paris News
Published April 21, 2009
Lamar County and District Attorney Gary Young is awaiting an investigative report on an alleged sexual assault in the Lamar County Jail of an 18-year-old inmate.
Aaron Hart told jailers he had been assaulted by two men earlier this month.
It was not Hart, but a fellow inmate who originally told sheriff’s deputies about the assault two weeks after it allegedly had happened.
“He didn’t even want to tell us about it,” Sheriff B.J. McCoy said. “After investigators talked to him, he finally told them what allegedly had happened.
McCoy said Hart wanted to stay in the general jail population.
“We isolated the two suspects, until they can be transferred to prison,” McCoy said.
Hart was never hospitalized, and “appeared to be OK,” according to McCoy.
Hart has been the focus of a groundswell of activity concerning the handling of the mentally challenged incarcerated in Texas.
The teenager has been sentenced to 100 years in the Texas prison system on his conviction of five counts of sexual assault of a child, and two weeks ago his plea for a new trial or new sentence was rejected by 6th District Court Judge Eric Clifford in Lamar County.
It was Clifford who passed down the sentence Feb. 13, stacking three 30-year terms and two five-year terms to put Hart in prison for 100 years.
The sentences were handed out by a jury.
Hart’s appeals attorney David Pearson asked the court to throw out Hart’s conviction and sentence on the grounds of ineffective counsel in the original trial, and the fact Hart has a measured IQ of only 47, and should not be put in the general prison population.
According to Pearson, he will continue fighting the conviction in appeals court.
“This case cried out for a mental health evaluation to explain the definition of mental retardation,” Pearson said.
In discussing the case Monday, Young asked a question: “Does he (Hart) need to be in the general prison population?”
Then he answered his own question: “No, but there is no place to deal with him in the State of Texas. He doesn’t need to be home, either.”
“It is a fact Aaron Hart committed the crime,” Young said. “The evidence was overwhelming. It is obvious Hart has problems, and the jurors felt he is a danger to this community.”
Young said Hart was competent enough to plead guilty, but there is no middle ground for the treatment of the mentally challenged in Texas.
“It is either a short-time treatment or a prison sentence for those people who face mental problems,” Young said. “My job is to protect the citizens of Lamar County. It is the state’s job to determine what to do with the mentally challenged.”
Cries are being raised from across the nation about the handling of the mentally challenged in Texas, and movements are being formed to force Texas to change its laws regarding the handling of the mentally deficient people.
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