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Two years ago, Rakim Sharkey was facing the rest of his life in prison for sex trafficking two minors and an adult woman. But former prosecutors in the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office offered him a plea deal that kept him out of prison and off the sex offender registry.
That deal may now be coming apart though, as Sharkey was rearrested in Nueces County in April. He has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful restraint and burglary.
According to police records, Sharkey and a second man used weapons to try and rob and detain people in a house in Corpus Christi. Three and a half bags of marijuana were seized along with pills, cash and guns.
Sharkey is currently in jail in Nueces County.
The episode raises questions about how this case was handled inside the attorney general’s office. The agency has seen significant turnover over the course under Paxton, a Republican who has fought accusations of impropriety for years, with the much-lauded trafficking unit particularly struggling to secure convictions.
A Republican now running for the U.S. Senate, Paxton has been critical of local prosecutors who he says have been too lenient on those accused of crimes. He has pushed for new state laws that would deny bail for some violence offenses.
James Winters, the agency lawyer working on the case at the time of Sharkey’s deal, referred questions to the Office of the Attorney General. A spokesperson with Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite cutting a deal earlier, Paxton’s office is now considering attempting to send the man away for significant prison time, a move celebrated by victims’ family members.
Irma Reyes came to court to get justice for her daughter. Instead, the defendants received far less than what she thought they deserved. Reyes considered the sentence a betrayal.
Bexar County case
Sharkey was initially arrested with another man in 2017 for selling the sexual favors of three women through force, fraud or coercion. This included two minors. He was charged with “continuous” trafficking of persons for the alleged repeated occurrences, which carries a prison term of 25 years to life in prison.
The girls were runaways from a San Antonio drug treatment center. In court, they described beatings and being forced to have sex with older men over the course of days.
Lawyers from Paxton’s sex trafficking unit had a wealth of evidence against the two men including: text messages arranging meetings with men, photographs, hotel surveillance, cooperating victims and at least one corroborating witness. A plea deal including significant jail time had been floated by prosecutors early on, but was rejected by the defense team.
The case was set to go to trial when the pandemic struck, causing criminal courts in Bexar County to close for 18 months. The case was assigned to the 226th District Court in 2022 with a new prosecutor. Seven days of testimony resulted in a mistrial after several people in the court, including jurors, contracted COVID-19.
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By the time the case went back to court, it had another prosecutor — the case’s eighth. James Winters was less interested in going forward with the case.
He decided to give the men plea deals that included no jail time and no addition to the sex offender registry.
Winters told the judge, Velia Meza, that he was concerned about pursuing the case because of how much time had elapsed. Meza had denied the state’s request for more preparation time. Winters also told the court that one victim could not be located, a fact that the woman’s mother Irma Reyes said was a lie.
Other former lawyers in the Office of the Attorney General who worked on the case believed the punishment given to Sharkey and his alleged co-conspirator, Elijah Teel, were too lenient. Like Sharkey, Teel was also offered what’s called deferred adjudication, meaning he served no time in prison. He too was not added to the sex offender registry.
Winters left the office not long after this case ended in 2023.
Courtesy photo
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Corpus Christi Police Department
What’s next?
At the conclusion of court proceedings that would release Sharkey without prison time, Meza warned him that if he violated the deal, she could throw him in prison for life.
“Keep that in mind,” she said. “I have the full range if anything goes wrong.”
Sharkey now sits in a Nueces County jail. Heavily redacted arrest records allege that Sharkey and a man named Dantril Tapp-Hawkins entered a home with a shotgun intending to rob the residents.
Witnesses and much of the police officers statements are redacted, so it is unclear what transpired, but it was Hawkins and Sharkey who appear to have been bloodied in the ensuing melee.
Nueces County did not respond to questions about what could happen next. Meza has since become an appellate court judge and also declined to discuss the case. Sharkey was unavailable for comment.
If the county does not pursue the case, it isn’t clear what the impact will be on the move to put him in prison.
Documents obtained by The Texas Newsroom confirm that the Attorney General’s office has filed a motion to kill Sharkey’s probation. The records show that the office wants prison time for violating the terms of his deal due to his burglary and unlawful restraint charges, for failing to drug test, for leaving the county without permission and for the weapons charge.
The mother of one of the girls involved in the original trafficking case told The Texas Newsroom that she had been contacted by someone in Paxton’s office about the case. She hoped that her daughter’s tormentor would be imprisoned.
“They said they were going to make it so he would go to prison for a long time,” said Reyes.
Great Job Paul Flahive & the Team @ Texas Public Radio Source link for sharing this story.
