The decision, the prosecutor on the case said during a recent hearing, was made to keep Graham from once again representing himself in front of a jury. In the first trial, his conduct, including asking the victim whether she found him handsome, prompted a judge to pause the case and order a psychological examination.
“The sole reason for the misdemeanor charges is to avoid having a repeat of his conduct in front of a jury,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenya Davis said at a recent D.C. Superior Court hearing. All misdemeanor cases are heard by judges without juries.
Prosecutors said Graham, 28, met the woman on July 4, 2018, and invited her to his home to escape the heat while she was waiting for a bus. The woman testified that she went willingly, but once she was there, Graham threw her on his bed, choked her and held her down.
Graham contends the sex was consensual. When the trial began in September, the proceedings took an unusual turn when the defendant, who has no legal training, decided to represent himself.
Graham told the jury that he and the woman made “magic” — a term he used for sex. When he began cross-examining the woman, one of his first questions was, “Do you think the defendant is handsome?” His other questions included, “Do you consider yourself an emotional female?” and “Are you familiar with the film ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’?” At one point, Graham loudly snapped at the court-appointed lawyer assisting him, reminding him that “I am the attorney.”
During a hearing Wednesday, Graham was, at times, antagonistic toward the lead prosecutor.
“You just need to let this go,” Graham told Davis. “I got more time now behind me than I would get.”
Graham, who has been in D.C. jail for about 14 months since his arrest following the alleged attack, has been incarcerated longer than the maximum sentence for the misdemeanor sexual assault charges.
But prosecutors are hoping for at least two more years of incarceration for Graham. When he was arrested in July 2018, he was on probation for a 2015 assault with a dangerous weapon case.
In 2015, Graham pleaded guilty to pointing a weapon — which turned out to be a BB gun — at two men who had just exited a Chinese food carryout in Southeast Washington. Graham, prosecutors said, forced the men to surrender their plastic containers of food. He was sentenced to two years in jail but only served a month. He now could face the remainder of that sentence for allegedly violating his probation.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Danya Dayson oversaw Graham’s 2015 case and the rape case. She also will oversee Graham’s misdemeanor trial and probation violation hearings, both of which are scheduled to begin Jan. 7.
Dayson declared a mistrial in Graham’s first trial after she learned jurors had mistakenly viewed police body-camera video that was not admitted as evidence but was sent to the jury room.
Dayson also found that jurors, who had been instructed to not conduct any research on the case on their own, did an Internet search of the temperature on the day the alleged sexual assault occurred and Googled the address of Graham’s home in relation to the bus stop.
Before excusing the jurors to leave, the judge took a poll of the jurors and discovered the jury was 10 to 2 in favor of acquittal.
At a hearing this past week, Dayson ordered that Graham be sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a District psychiatric facility. Dayson made the decision, she said, to ensure that Graham’s competency does not deteriorate between now and his trial.