Chapter 3 | The trial: Witnesses take the stand, but a guilty verdict is never guaranteed

LANSING, MICHIGAN – Police vehicles barreled through the Walmart parking lot as Marshawn Curtis helped his 4-year-old daughter into the car. Before he could start the engine, the cops boxed him in.

We have a warrant for your arrest, one of them informed him.

The charge was rape. The victim was Joslyn Phillips, who had gone to his house on his 19th birthday a decade earlier.

After the little girl’s mother arrived, the arresting officer cuffed Curtis and texted Detective Annie Harrison to let her know he was in custody.

Curtis had a long history of sexual violence and intimidation. The many times he’d been caught exposing himself or shooting secret videos. The 15-year-old he’d impregnated in 2012. Another allegation of rape, which he’d gotten out of after police in Georgia closed the case.

Harrison wasn’t going to do that. She was determined to make him tell her the truth. She turned on the camera and walked into the interrogation room.

Curtis sat with his hands in his lap, teary-eyed.

“I am so mind-blown and hurt,” he said, his voice quavering. “How can you tell me I’m innocent until proven guilty, but you can just snatch me up at a Walmart with my kid?”

Harrison could see why Curtis was acting shocked. He’d gotten away with his crimes for so long, of course he thought he’d never be charged with raping Phillips.

“I have two beautiful baby girls at home,” he told Harrison. “I’m trying to do right.”

After half an hour of playing the victim, Curtis seemed to figure out she wasn’t buying it. He leaned forward.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve talked to somebody about this before,” he said, as if he’d just remembered being questioned by a Lansing Police detective back in 2012. “Do you know that?”

Harrison nodded. “Yes.”

“You know I was as honest as I could possibly be,” Curtis said. “And after that, nothing came up about it.”

As honest as he could possibly be without incriminating himself , the detective thought. As honest as he could possibly be without admitting what really happened.

Harrison asked if anyone else had ever accused him of rape. Curtis said no. He went on and on, complaining that she’d had him arrested after 10 years, and denying he’d ever raped anyone.

Harrison listened. After all, the most important characteristic a detective can have is curiosity.

But with Curtis, the lies kept coming. She needed to let him know who was in control.

As he protested about how she wasn’t being fair to him, Harrison finally interrupted: “Why don’t we talk about the rape that you committed ... in Atlanta?”

Curtis stopped, mid-sentence. “Hold on, say that again?”

She did, leaning forward and enunciating each word clearly.

Curtis shook his head over and over.

“Never charged. Nothing at all,” he said. “I was asked about it. I was asked about some insanity that had to do with that, and nothing ever happened.”

He tried to change the subject, but she reeled him back: “I think we should talk about what we’re here for.”

Curtis insisted he wasn’t lying.

“The detective that was working that case told me the lady was cuckoo and she’d caught her up in multiple lies ,” he said, “and that was the end of it.”

When he actually did something wrong – like when he’d been picked up for masturbating in public – he had no problem cooperating with the police, Curtis told Harrison.

“When I was originally arrested, made their jobs as easy as possible. Completely and fully admitted everything that happened and what I did,” he said.

Another lie. He had only cooperated with some of the investigators after they showed him surveillance video.

Most of Harrison’s interviews with suspects lasted about an hour. Curtis had been talking in circles for more than two. She was growing frustrated.

“I need to go get a water refill,” she told him, rising from her chair.

Really, she needed to get away from him. Outside, Harrison gave herself a mental pep talk: It’s always hard in the moment, but it will pay off. Just keep him talking.

As part of his probation for indecent exposure, Curtis had been ordered to attend sex offender treatment. She decided to ask him more about that.

Back in the room, he took the bait.

“It was so embarrassing, and I tried to hide it,” he said. “But, you know, I ain’t the only one that struggles with stuff like that, though. It makes me feel better to talk about it, knowing you’re not alone, and then really trying to be better for yourself.”

With that, Harrison saw another opening.

“What I’m hearing is that you are a lot more aware today than you were in 2012, about the impact that actions can have on others,” she said. “I think it’s possible, involving Joslyn, that it was something she didn’t want to do, but maybe you don’t recognize that.”

She pushed him: “Did you expose yourself to her?”

Curtis replied with a question of his own: “Do you think I did?”

“I wasn’t there,” she told him. “ That is what she says you did. Tell me what you did. Tell me what happened.”

Over the next 2 ½ hours, she drew out his version of that night ― that the sex was consensual, but Phillips got angry afterward when he told her to leave.

While it wasn’t as good as a confession, it was better than nothing. Now, instead of having months to fine-tune the story, he would be stuck with it at trial.

∎∎∎

When Harrison arrived at the courthouse for the preliminary hearing a month later, in February 2022, she found Phillips sitting on a bench in the hallway, alone.

At this hearing, the judge would decide if there was enough evidence for Curtis to go to trial for raping her. If not, the charges would be thrown out.

Phillips looked vulnerable, sitting there, and Harrison knew she was. But that was about to change.

Phillips had already hired a lawyer of her own. Soon, she would file a federal civil suit against the City of Lansing, the county, police officers and prosecutors for mishandling her case.

Before they walked into the courtroom, Phillips stopped.

Just so you know, she told Harrison , all further contact is to go through my attorney.

Harrison nodded.

Good for you, she said. You don’t have any reason to trust me. I’m proud of you for protecting yourself.

At the end of the hearing, the judge ordered Curtis to stand trial.

Ten days later, Harrison answered her phone and was surprised to hear Phillips’ voice.

I need to tell you something really important, Phillips said. I had always felt like he preyed on me, but now I know he did.

Phillips explained that after she was assaulted, a bunch of people who knew Curtis had sent her harassing messages on Facebook. She had been re-reading them in preparation for the trial when she’d stumbled upon a message thread from before the rape.

“You should come hang out with me,” a guy named Mike Love had written. “I’m bored ... just sitting here at home all by myself.”

“I don’t chill with strangers,” she wrote back. “No offense.”

“I can just take you to lunch or something so we can talk,” he replied. “Then after all that we can talk about you coming to my house and whatever else. A chance is all I ask for.”

She blocked him.

Phillips hadn’t realized it a few months later, when she had carried her purple bookbag to the bus station and made a new friend. But now she did: The picture on Mike Love’s account was Marshawn Curtis.

∎∎∎

The trial began in November 2023.

Phillips, with baggy clothes and a frizzy ponytail, was a near-constant presence in the courtroom, but rarely said a word to Harrison. Even when she had a question for the detective, Phillips didn’t ask it directly. Instead, she asked the victim advocate to get her an answer.

The judge had to instruct Phillips to speak louder as she took the stand and talked about meeting Curtis, going to his house on his birthday, telling him, “I don’t want to have sex with you, but we can still be friends.”

The prosecutor displayed a photo of a smiling teenage redhead – unrecognizable as the 28-year-old woman on the witness stand.

Phillips described the night she was raped, and what happened when she saw Curtis again.

One time, Phillips and her mother, who had come back to Lansing after the rape, were on the bus when Curtis and some of his friends got on and sat behind them. From their seats, Phillips and her mom could hear him start. He proceeded to brag about what he had done to her, bringing her mother to tears. They got off at the next stop and walked the rest of the way home.

Another time, Phillips and her daughter, still in a stroller, had joined her brother for a festival in Old Town Lansing. One of her brother’s friends from work, who called himself Curtis, walked up.

That’s the man who raped me , Phillips told her brother in a panic.

Wait, no, her brother said. That guy’s name was Marshawn. This is Curtis.

Yeah, she replied. Marshawn Curtis.

Her brother, angry at the deception, looked like he was about to take a swing at the guy.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Curtis said as he walked away.

Phillips remained composed as defense attorney Melissa Patrick cross-examined her.

“Isn’t it true that this sex between you and Mr. Curtis was consensual sex?” Patrick asked.

“It was rape,” Phillips said plainly. “It wasn’t consensual.”

Patrick also brought up Phillips’ civil suit.

“Are you seeking monetary damages in that lawsuit?” the attorney asked.

“I'm seeking accountability,” Phillips replied.

Then the jury heard from some of the women Harrison had located during her investigation of Curtis.

One by one, they entered the courtroom to testify: the woman from the mall, the woman from the library, the woman outside the courthouse, the woman on the Michigan State campus.

Then one more woman stepped through the door. She had traveled 800 miles to get there because Detective Annie Harrison asked her to.

∎∎∎

As Emily Zaballos strode toward the witness stand, she looked Curtis in the eye.

As she told the jury he raped her, she didn’t cry. She didn’t even blink.

Zaballos had gone back and forth about whether to get on the plane from her home in Georgia to Michigan, where she had never been. She didn’t want to talk about her assault ever again. But she had ultimately decided if she could prevent Curtis from hurting someone else, she had to try.

Zaballos’ words from the stand echoed Phillips’ from the day before: “I didn’t want him there, period, which I made very clear. ... It was, ‘no means no.’ Stop.”

Harrison never tried to predict the behavior of a jury, but the trial seemed to be going well. The jurors appeared to believe Zaballos when she said Curtis had made her uncomfortable from the minute he arrived at her house, very late and very drunk.

Under cross-examination, Patrick asked Zaballos if she remembered some of the things that had happened earlier in the evening: dancing with Curtis, talking with a friend on the phone.

Zaballos said no.

Patrick asked: “If I showed you a video where you were talking on the phone, would that refresh your memory?”

A wave of confusion rolled through the courtroom.

But Harrison knew exactly what Patrick was talking about. The video of Zaballos’ interrogation wasn’t the only one the Georgia police had shared with her.

There was a second video.

The jurors weren’t in the courtroom as the footage rolled. The judge wanted to watch it and hear the lawyers’ arguments before deciding if they could see it.

Harrison sat still at the prosecution table as an image of Zaballos from three years earlier appeared on the screen.

There she was, sprawled on the bed in shorts and a tank top. There she was, brash and loud, talking with a friend on speaker. There she was, a little drunk, smiling and laughing with a man she hardly knew.

Harrison shifted her focus from the screen to the witness stand. Zaballos didn’t know Curtis had secretly shot a video of her that night. She had never seen it before.

When the clip ended, Patrick began her argument: This video was evidence Zaballos was a liar. Curtis hadn’t made her uncomfortable at all. The jury deserved to see it.

Before Harrison’s eyes, the strong, confident woman disappeared from the stand, replaced by one who was watching herself about to be raped.

Zaballos cleared her throat, then did it again. And again. She raised her hand – stop – then closed her eyes and brought it to her mouth.

Harrison and the victim advocate, Sara Tunney, realized simultaneously what was about to happen. They both ran toward the front of the courtroom, Harrison grabbing a trash can on the way.

Each of them took an elbow and rushed Zaballos down the hall to the restroom, where she threw up.

∎∎∎

On the witness stand, Marshawn Curtis addressed his attorney as ma’am. He made eye contact with both her and the jurors. And when she asked about the young lady he’d met at the bus station, Curtis said he and Phillips had a great time celebrating his birthday back in 2012.

For everything Phillips had said, he said something different.

She hadn’t missed the bus. She had always planned to stay the night.

When he kissed her, she didn’t turn away.

She never told him she didn’t want to have sex.

He never told her he wanted to get her pregnant.

He did, however, fail to pull out in time.

“At that point, she kind of got upset. She kind of … freaked out,” he testified.

She soon calmed down and lay beside him, he said. He didn’t hold her down.

He didn’t throw up, he just dry-heaved over the side of the bed.

She didn’t bolt for the door, he said. She left in a huff later, after he got a text from his girlfriend and told her to get out.

As she stomped off down the street, he stood on the porch smoking — not masturbating.

The next day he saw her at the bus station and asked if they could talk. She just gave him a dirty look. After she’d gone, he asked her friends what was going on.

“They just said that Joslyn said that I did something to her,” he testified.

Curtis said he didn’t remember messaging Phillips on Facebook as Mike Love. The name was a joke, and he had chatted online with lots of people using that account.

As for Zaballos, Curtis denied having sex with her. He said he had touched her sexually as they drunkenly danced, but that was all. The judge had allowed the jurors to watch the video he made of her that night, and his lawyer asked Curtis why he did it.

His answer wasn’t entirely clear: “I honestly – it kind of referred me back to my initial – the case why I’m here. And I just kind of wanted to record it to show somebody how crazy she was acting.”

When his attorney asked about the many times he had exposed himself to women he didn’t know, Curtis said that he’d been sexually abused as a child.

He said when detectives questioned him after he’d followed Hannah home from a bar near Michigan State, he’d come clean right away.

“At that point, I was tired of hiding what I was doing, lying to myself, thinking that I had control over it, and I just confessed to them, and I asked for help,” he said, his voice steady.

“I used to tell myself that I’m not touching anybody, I’m not putting my hands on anybody, so it’s not that bad,” he said.

By now, he said, he had learned a lesson: “I don’t necessarily have to touch anybody to violate them.”

His lawyer finished by drawing out the distinction between that and rape: “OK. Have you ever – even with these problems that you say that you have, have you ever sexually assaulted or raped any woman?”

Curtis’ answer: “No.”

∎∎∎

Every police detective in America knows this simple truth: A guilty verdict is never guaranteed.

Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt can be tough to prove. The criminal justice system is designed to make it hard to get a conviction, to prevent innocent people from going to prison.

But sometimes, that same system means a detective – who gained the trust of a traumatized victim, who spent months building a case, who made a long-awaited arrest – doesn’t get the result she’s been hoping for.

Sometimes, it means people get away with doing terrible things.

Sexual assault trials are among the hardest to win. The crimes are almost always committed in private, and only two people in the world know what really happened. Sometimes, if the jurors can’t figure out who’s telling the truth, a rapist goes free.

He said, she said.

The fact that thousands of rape kits have been hauled out of storage and tested with federal grants from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative hasn’t increased the country’s rape conviction rate at all. Most sexual assault cases still don’t make it to trial, and even when they do, many end with “not guilty.”

Cops who work sex crimes can’t always make peace with that. Some transfer to other beats. Leave for private security jobs. Drink until it ruins their careers, or their lives.

The ones who stick with it know this: No single person can determine the outcome. The system works because every person involved has a job to do.

The police investigate the crime. The prosecutor presents the case. The victim speaks her truth. The jurors listen.

If they all do their best – even if a guilty man walks free – it has to be enough.

∎∎∎

Harrison knew Aylysh Gallagher was the expert when it came to sexual predators like Curtis.

Both Harrison and Patricia Ceresa, the lead prosecutor on Curtis’ rape case, thought the bold young lawyer could be helpful. And Gallagher was willing to take another crack at Curtis. Five years earlier, in 2018, she was the one who lost at trial after prosecuting him for domestic violence without the victim’s testimony.

One of Gallagher’s tasks was to cross-examine Curtis. As she did so, he adopted the persona of a man who had been woefully mistreated by Harrison.

“I felt like I was being grilled,” he said.

Gallagher wanted to know if he’d been honest with Harrison.

“I’m not going to say that I was,” Curtis conceded. “I can’t remember exactly what was discussed. I can just remember my feelings.”

It was very different, he said, from his quick conversation with the detective in Georgia. When Curtis told her he had a video of Zaballos, she’d asked him to send it.

From the prosecution table, Harrison watched the familiar back-and-forth. She was certain she knew why Curtis shot the video: He’d been planning to rape Zaballos. He wanted to make her look like a liar if she called the police. And the plan had worked in Georgia.

Now, Harrison waited to see if it would work on the jury.

Gallagher pressed Curtis on why, exactly, he had made the recording in the first place: “Because you were reminded of this case?”

His confidence fell away.

“Like I said,” he stuttered. “That wasn’t all that I said. I did say that, Ms. Gallagher, but I just wanted it to be noted how crazy she was acting.”

Gallagher stared him down.

“Because if you’re crazy,” she asked icily, “you can’t be sexually assaulted?”

∎∎∎

The jurors deliberated for less than four hours. On Dec. 1, 2023, they found Marshawn Curtis guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with personal injury.

As the judge read the verdict, Harrison and both prosecutors turned to smile at Phillips. She didn’t smile back.

Curtis wouldn’t be sentenced for more than two months. In Michigan, the allowable sentence for his crime was “life or any term of years,” meaning that even with the guilty verdict, it was possible he could be sentenced to only a short time behind bars.

On Valentine’s Day 2024, Judge James S. Jamo’s courtroom was called to order for the sentencing hearing.

Joslyn Phillips spoke directly to Curtis, telling him murder would have been kinder than the crime he committed.

Then the judge delivered the sentence: 17 ½ to 80 years. Curtis could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Court was adjourned. A deputy cuffed Curtis and led him away.

In the courtroom, a crowd lingered.

At the table where they had spent weeks together at trial, Harrison, Gallagher and Ceresa congratulated one another. Two more prosecutors joined them.

Beside her sister in the front row of the gallery, Phillips wiped away tears.

From the second row, Tunney patted her shoulder.

Behind them, the woman Curtis was accused of accosting at the mall relaxed into her husband’s embrace.

From the back of the courtroom, Harrison’s partner, Joseph Merritt, and the detective who arrested Curtis outside the Walmart nodded toward her in approval.

The case was over. But not everyone had been there to see it.

As the sentence came down, Harrison tapped out a text.

A phone buzzed in Georgia, where Emily Zaballos waited alone.

∎∎∎

UNTESTED, Chapter 3 | Previously: Chapter 1, The Case . | Chapter 2, The Chase . | About this story . | 8 lessons learned .

Gina Barton is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY. She can be reached at (262) 757-8640 or gbarton@gannett.com . Follow her on X @writerbarton .

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chapter 3 | The trial: Witnesses take the stand, but a guilty verdict is never guaranteed