National

A prosecutor says no to a rape charge, so a college student calls her own grand jury



Madison Smith, who was attacked in a dorm room at her small college in Lindsborg, Kan., turned to a state law from the 1880s to pursue the rape charge that a prosecutor refused to bring. (Christopher Smith/for The Washington Post)

By Peter Kendall
May 19, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT

Madison Smith will be just a few months out of college when her story is heard this fall by a most unusual Kansas grand jury — one she convened. ... For three years, the local prosecutor has resolutely refused to make her case: that what began as consensual sex in a college dorm room became a rape, and that she was unable to say “stop” because her classmate was strangling her.

But Smith invoked a vestige of frontier justice that allows citizens in Kansas to summon a grand jury when they think prosecutors are neglecting to bring charges in a crime. The law, dating to the 1800s, was originally used to go after saloonkeepers when authorities ignored violations of statewide prohibition. The 22-year-old graduate is believed to be the first to convene a citizen grand jury after a prosecutor declined to pursue a sex-crime charge. ... “It took me a while to find my voice,” she said recently. “But I have found it, and I am going to use it.”

{snip}

Unlike Smith, most victims have no way to seek justice when they feel a blind eye is being turned toward a crime. Only five other states, all in the Great Plains or the West, have similar laws still on the books. The Kansas statute requires an individual to gather a certain number of signatures of support, which forced Smith to relive her trauma over and over in conversations with strangers. ... She did so in a hair salon parking lot, where she and her parents set up a tent to greet passersby.

By then, court records and recordings of conversations reveal, their disagreement with McPherson County Attorney Gregory Benefiel had turned highly contentious. ... “The one person who I believed was supposed to fight for the victim on the legal side has pushed me aside, stalling, and waiting for me to give up,” Smith wrote in one statement to the court. “This is a common tactic used by defense attorneys, but now the prosecution. I won’t ever give up. Ever.”

{snip}