Democratic Lawyer Mark Benavides may be a small fish (he lost his only district court race), but his crimes stand out for their sheer depravity:
A Wilson County jury on Friday sentenced a former San Antonio attorney to 80 years in prison on each of the six counts he faced for coercing clients into sex.
Mark Henry Benavides will have to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.
Snip.
“This is human trafficking,” Chacon said. “He transported, coerced, threatened and made them feel they had no choice. This jury understood that.”
Benavides was convicted Tuesday of continuous trafficking of persons and faces 25 to 99 years or life in prison. Six women he had represented in prostitution or drug cases testified he coerced them into having sex to keep them out of jail or lessen their legal troubles, and videotaped the encounters, which were shown to the jury.
Investigators seized 246 mini DVDs that contained hundreds of videos of Benavides and the former clients engaged in various sex acts, in which he could be heard directing the women and telling them what to do and say.
During the trial, San Antonio Police Department detective Manual Morales testified that police found a filing cabinet at Benavides’ home containing 246 of what the detective called “pornographic DVDs” that showed Benavides having sex with women who police said were Benavides’ clients.
Some of the graphic and sexually explicit videos were played for jurors. A video was so graphic that a female juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom last Tuesday.
The women testified that in addition to recordings made in a motel, Benavides also had sex with them in jury and witness rooms at the courthouse.
At least one of the victims in the indictment was a minor.
I’m seeing various reports that Benavides’ coerced sex acts involved torture, but I am unable to find any mainstream media reports confirming those allegations, despite the fainting juror. Might have to wait for the official trial transcript…