County jailer sentenced for sexual abuse

Darrion Morgan, 26, of Clinton, was sentenced to four years in prison Tuesday after being found guilty on one count of sexual battery while overseeing a female inmate of the Custer County Jail.
District Judge Doug Haught found Morgan guilty in the March 2017 treatment of inmate Monique Bowens.
Morgan had opted to be tried by the judge rather than a jury. Because of that, Judge Haught could pronounce sentence immediately upon finding him guilty. Morgan was actually tried on two counts of sexual battery but was found guilty on just one.
District Attorney Angela Marsee, who personally handled Morgan’s prosecution in the one-day bench trial, reminded the judge in her closing argument that as a county employee the former jailer held a special “position of confidence and trust.” While not asking for a specific sentence, she did recall the case of former sheriff Mike Burgess who is now serving 79 years in prison after being found guilty in 2009 on 13 counts of sexually mistreating female participants in a Drug Court program who were under his jurisdiction.
The four years was the same sentence a Washita County jury had recommended in a manslaughter trial Haught presided over last week. In that one, jurors found Dr. Jerry Hernandez of Cordell guilty of killing his father-in-law, Roy Lee Weeaks of Colorado, on Dec. 7, 2016. Judge Haught set sentencing in that one for Aug. 30. 
In Tuesday’s trial of Morgan, defense attorney Glen Dresback of Cleveland in Pawnee County northeast of Stillwater maintained his client’s innocence until the end.
“My client is neither a sex offender nor a felon,” Dresback said in his closing argument. “We ask that he be found not guilty.” Dresback said there was “no touching, no grabbing,” and that Ms. Bowens denied those things as well “until later she found there was something to gain.”
That was in reference to a civil suit Dresback expects her to file against Custer County, if she hasn’t already done so, for her alleged mistreatment while in the County Jail at Arapaho.
Speaking after the judge’s finding of guilt, Dresback asked that his client be housed someplace other than the Custer County Jail. “I don’t get involved in that,” said Judge Haught, stating that would be up to the sheriff (and presumably the Department of Corrections).
Morgan was accused of kissing Ms. Bowens, hugging her, grabbing her rear end, fondling her breast and rubbing her legs on March 18, 2017, in the medical room at the jail. Testifying in his own defense, he denied all those allegations, but his claims were contradicted not only by testimony from Bowens but also by what Special Agent Trevor Ridgeway from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said Morgan told him during an interview on March 31, 2017.
When the defendant took the stand, Mrs. Marsee asked him if he had told Ridgeway he kissed Bowens on two separate occasions, including with his tongue; whether he had grabbed her rear end; and while unable to remember groping her chest, whether he had admitted it was possible.
Marsee implied he had admitted to Ridgeway that those things were true and asked him, “Why did you change your story?”
“He told me he was going to get the right answer,” said Morgan.
Asked what he thought Ridgeway meant by that, Morgan said he figured the agent would just keep questioning him until he got “what he wanted to hear.”
However, he repeatedly denied that he and Bowens ever had oral sex, or sex of any kind, and said the only reason he even talked with Ridgeway was because he thought he had to.
But he also admitted finding photos on the cell phones or Facebook pages of other female inmates which showed them performing sex acts while nude, and sending the photos to his own phone or Facebook page.
Ms. Bowens testified that when she and Morgan were together neither of them ever took off any of their clothing and he never reached under her clothing.
Morgan was employed by the county from March 15, 2015, until March 31, 2017.
Dresback, the defense attorney, repeatedly tested Judge Haught’s patience with objections to things that were said.
Once, Dresback said what a witness had just said was not only hearsay, which is not allowed, but “hearsay within hearsay.” He added, “I have to ask for a mistrial.”
Haught let him know quickly he wasn’t going to get it but noted that the record would reflect he had objected to that too. “You have a continuing objection,” said the judge.