Jail-Rape Trial Set to Begin in Jeffco
Information slip-up prompts new policy
By John Ingold, Denver Post Staff Writer
Originally published in the Denver Post, July 25, 2002
A 20-year-old man who admitted raping his cellmate seven years ago in a juvenile detention center is charged with raping his cellmate in the Jefferson County jail and is being investigated for allegedly raping another inmate at another facility.
Information-sharing slip-ups apparently prevented James Westbrook's past from following him from facility to facility.
Westbrook is scheduled to go on trial Monday on 23 counts of sexual assault and one count of extortion for allegedly raping his 19-year-old cellmate at the Jefferson County jail.
The assaults occurred from the evening of Jan. 3 to the morning of Jan. 4, according to court documents.
The assaults also happened just hours after another inmate told deputies that Westbrook tried to sexually assault him when they were cellmates, court records show.
Jefferson County sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Tallman said deputies separated Westbrook and that inmate.
Six hours later, when the 19-year-old was jailed, deputies had not passed on information about the earlier accusations to the next shift.
The teen, arrested for a probation violation in a drunken driving case, was put in a cell with Westbrook, Tallman said.
Several times during the night, Westbrook threatened the 19-year-old's life and anally penetrated him, according to court documents. Two deputies at the jail were disciplined, Tallman said.
"We have procedures in place in the way that information should be shared from shift to shift to make informed decisions; thus the policy violation," Tallman said.
Prompted by the incident, jail officials in March started requiring more detailed information about inmates transferred there from other facilities and began providing greater background on inmates they sent elsewhere.
Had they adopted that policy before, they might have learned of a previous sex crime by Westbrook.
In 1995, court documents state, Westbrook pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree sexual assault after his cellmate at Mount View Detention Center said Westbrook, then a juvenile, forced him to have oral and anal sex.
Tallman said Jefferson County deputies didn't know of the case Dec. 31, when they moved Westbrook from Denver to their jail.
Westbrook was returned to Denver County Jail, then moved to the Denver Regional Diagnostic Center, the first step for inmates going to prison.
There, on April 3, Westbrook's cellmate said Westbrook threatened and raped him. State Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said the center was told little of Westbrook's history. The Denver district attorney's office is reviewing the case.
