‘We’ll Put Him Where He Can’t Commit Any More Crimes’: Omar Best was a Convicted Serial Rapist Before Prison, and is a Convicted Serial Rapist of Raceless Female Staffers While in Prison! PA Attorney General’s Office Says It was Latest Vic’s Own Fault the Unarmed Black Man Raped Her

 

Omar Best 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Thanks to reader-researcher Jerry, who writes:

Yet another "assault" with the usual suspect(s) involved. As usual, the weasily media focuses on "victim blaming," rather than some of the other issues around this. When I saw the kind of consideration the perp was receiving, or should I say the suspension of belief that he could be capable of repeating his crime and given access to a victim, I knew he was black. A simple Google search affirmed that.

Note that the prosecutor in Best’s most recent trial, Centre County DA Stacy Parks Miller, observed that the latter’s arm sufficed as a weapon.

I suspect that the prison staffers Best raped are white, because of the way he treated them, the obsession that violent black felons so often have with white women, and the way he thought he could claim she was already his lover. Many violent black felons have sexual relationships with black female penal staffers, but they are all consensual, and I have never heard of a black felon doing to such a staffer what Best did to his victims.

The defense countered with just one witness, Best himself, whose rambling, stream-of-consciousness account suggested a consensual relationship in which the victim asked to be strangled.

Defense attorney Deborah Lux built on that, placing responsibility on the victim for interacting with Best and suggesting that the victim was crying when found, not because she was attacked, but because she was caught and might lose her job.

Parks Miller addressed that with color pictures of the victim’s injuries. Hours after the attack, her face was still an ashy purple. A week later, the whites of her eyes were still “as red as a cherry tomato,” filled with blood from vessels that burst as she was placed in a choke hold.

Best has since been sentenced to life in prison, which means that he will continue committing violent crimes—including rape—inside until he is paroled, and goes back to committing violent crimes—including rape—on the outside.

God only knows the actual number of people Omar Best has so far victimized inside and outside of jail.

Once upon a time, criminologists James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio referred to men like Best as “super-predators.” In support of the Bests of us, black AA “scholars” condemned Wilson and DiIulio as “racists.” As a result, no one speaks anymore of “super-predators.” But if Omar Best isn’t a super-predator, nobody is. Time was, when America had justice, he’d be put down.
 

Rockview rape trial: Jury finds Omar Best guilty on all counts
By Lori Falce lfalce@centredaily.com
May 20, 2014
Centre Daily News
 

Centre County Sheriff's deputies escort former SCI Rockview inmate Omar Best into the Centre County Courthouse annex, May 20, 2014. (Nabil K. Mark — CDT) [This is the cleaned-up version of Omar Best; he’s every bit as scary as the regular version. And the county has to hire bigger sheriff’s deputies! Best could strangle these guys with just a dirty look.]
 

BELLEFONTE — Prosecutors say it took Omar Best 27 minutes to strangle and rape a Rockview state prison employee. It took a Centre County jury less than two hours to find him guilty.

Best was convicted of rape by forcible compulsion, rape of an unconscious victim, sexual assault and two counts of aggravated assault.

The verdict came after a day of emotional testimony, not only from the 24-year-old victim, but from her co-workers — the corrections officer who found her crying and brutalized on the office floor, the female officer who was called by a distraught inmate, and the nurse who said it was the worst case of employee assault she had seen at the prison during her tenure.

Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller bolstered the vivid accounts of how Best pursued the clerk in the four short weeks she worked in the prison with science, including three forensic experts who testified that genetic material consistent with Best was found on the victim, and that some of her DNA was identified on him.

The defense countered with just one witness, Best himself, whose rambling, stream-of-consciousness account suggested a consensual relationship in which the victim asked to be strangled.

Defense attorney Deborah Lux built on that, placing responsibility on the victim for interacting with Best and suggesting that the victim was crying when found, not because she was attacked, but because she was caught and might lose her job.

Parks Miller addressed that with color pictures of the victim’s injuries. Hours after the attack, her face was still an ashy purple. A week later, the whites of her eyes were still “as red as a cherry tomato,” filled with blood from vessels that burst as she was placed in a choke hold.

When Lux challenged the idea that her client had threatened the victim with a knife that was never found, Parks Miller skewered the defendant with the claim on the stand.

“What did I need a knife for?” asked Best, who claimed he had physical [?] contact with the victim on two other occasions.

“You’re right,” said Parks Miller. “You had your arm.”

In her closing, Lux urged the jury to believe her client, stressing that he “has no reason to come into court and tell you” about the supposed sexual relationship between the two.

“Why would he say that? Be serious,” said Parks Miller, who said it was how Best could explain the DNA evidence.

Centre County Judge Bradley P. Lunsford has not set a date for sentencing yet.

Best has a lengthy history with the criminal justice system in the Philadelphia area, including various charges of robbery, rape, theft and assault. He was serving a sentence of up to 15 years at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview before being transferred after the attack.

Parks Miller said she is pursuing the maximum penalty for the conviction, but is still trying to determine just what that would be. Best may qualify for a possible life sentence as a three-strikes violator, she said.

“We are grateful for justice in this matter,” she said.

Lori Falce can be reached at 235-3910. Follow her on Twitter @LoriFalce.
 

Note that CNN reporter Sara Ganim alternately spells the victim’s attorney’s name “Rieders” and “Rieter,” respectively. The attorney’s name is Clifford A. Rieders. Apparently, CNN no longer employs proofreaders or copy editors. To my knowledge, it has never employed fact-checkers.
 

Pennsylvania woman blamed for her own rape in state response to lawsuit
By Sara Ganim
Updated 10:51 AM EDT, Thursday, September 25, 2014
CNN
 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Omar Best, a convicted rapist, was allowed close contact with typist at prison
• Typist, 24, complained about unsupervised access
• Best eventually raped typist and was convicted; the typist filed a federal suit
• "It's an attempt to embarrass the victim," victim's lawyer says of state response to federal suit

(CNN) -- The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is blaming a former state prison clerk for her own rape, in response to a federal lawsuit the woman filed.

The 24-year-old typist was working at the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, when she was attacked in 2013. She was choked unconscious and raped for 27 minutes by inmate Omar Best, who had been convicted three times previously of sex-related crimes, and then been transferred from a different state prison for assaulting a female assistant there.

"Despite this knowledge, defendants ... still allowed Omar Best to have unsupervised access to the offices of female employees," according to the lawsuit, which also blames the state for the rape.

In fact, the lawsuit says that the prison superintendent actually moved the clerk offices from a secure floor where there was no inmate contact to a location that was on a cell block.

"There were no locked doors between the offices and cell blocks, including Block C where (the victim) worked, except for the copy room," the lawsuit states.

Even though Best was convicted of the rape in May and a review of the prison found multiple failings and led to the superintendent's removal, a senior deputy attorney general wrote that the woman "acted in a manner which in whole or in part contributed to the events" in his response to her lawsuit.

It's victim shaming at its worst, the woman's lawyer told CNN.

"Worse than that, it's an attempt to embarrass the victim," said Clifford Rieders, a Williamsport, Pennsylvania, attorney.

The state attorney general's office at first declined to comment when the matter was reported by the Centre Daily Times, in State College, Pennsylvania.

Wednesday, the office released a statement saying that it is required to present all possible defenses and "contributory negligence is one such defense."

In the statement provided to CNN, the attorney general's office said, "This initial filing should not necessarily be interpreted as meaning this defense will be pursued throughout the entire case," adding that elected Attorney General Kathleen Kane was not aware her senior deputy included that defense in his filing.

"Attorney General Kane is disappointed that she was not made aware of this matter prior to the filing, and was saddened to learn that the filing implied that the victim somehow contributed to this crime."

Best is serving a life sentence for the woman's rape. The Pennsylvania state victim advocate said it's hypocritical to use victim-blaming as a defense for the prison.

"I think it's absolutely deplorable to blame the victim in this case," Jennifer Storm told CNN.

"It's not common legalese in rape cases," Storm said of the AG's defense. "And it shows a significant lack of sensitivity to not understand the harm this has done to the young woman and the re-victimization she's going through today.

"In a rape case, this is plain victim-blaming."

Opinion: Blame rapists for rape ... obviously

Storm and Rieter both pointed out that the local district attorney, Stacy Parks Miller, who prosecuted Best, whole-heartedly believed the victim. And so did a jury.

"The DA went to bat 100% for this victim," Storm said. "To then backtrack ... it's despicable, I'm disgusted.". [sic]

"It's obviously completely inconsistent with the criminal trial," Rieter said. "I think it's bad lawyering. It's what some lawyers do. I don't think it's right, or just, and has no basis here ... There are some people in this day and age who will still do that even though there is no factual or legal basis for it."

According to the suit, Best had been convicted three times prior of sex-related offenses. In 2010, DNA testing linked him to the 1999 abduction and rape of an 18-year-old woman in Philadelphia, and he was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison for it. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to rape and robbery in another Philadelphia case and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

In a 1996 case, he pleaded guilty to indecent assault, after being charged with attempted rape, the lawsuit says.

Then, while imprisoned at another facility called Graterford, Best assaulted a female assistant, according to the lawsuit, and was transferred to the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, where this victim worked.

The victim had complained twice to her boss -- about a week before the attack -- that she felt uncomfortable and unsafe with Best coming into her office. She was assured Best would no longer have access to her office, the lawsuit states.

But on July 25, around 8:30 a.m., Best went to her office under the guise of taking out her trash, and grabbed the woman from behind, choking her until she passed out. She tried to blow a distress whistle she carried, but no one heard it. Her lawsuit also claims the prison was understaffed.

[The "understaffed" line is irrelevant. If you station unarmed employees in places where they are helpless against attacks, inmates will take advantage, regardless of staffing levels. Her lawyer's claim of understaffing is a strategy to increase the eventual jury or award or settlement.]

A prison investigation led to the firing of the superintendent, Marirosa Lamas, the hiring of 70 new corrections officers, and the moving of those offices where she had worked to a more secure space, away from inmates.

In the state's response, it denied that the internal investigation was the reason for Lamas leaving.

The victim is suing the state Department of Corrections, her former supervisor, the block manager, and the former [AA] superintendent, Lamas.