Texas Jury Convicts Ex-San Antonio Lawyer of Having Sex With Clients
A Texas jury has found a former San Antonio criminal defense attorney guilty of having sex with his clients in exchange for legal services. He faces…
April 04, 2018 at 01:51 PM
2 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Texas Lawyer
A Texas jury has found a former San Antonio criminal defense attorney guilty of having sex with his clients in exchange for legal services. He faces a range of punishment of anywhere from 25-99 years or life in prison, though he has filed a motion asking the jury to consider sentencing him to probation.
It took the jury four hours to find Mark Benavides guilty of all six counts of continuous trafficking of persons, a first-degree felony, according to a report in the San Antonio Express-News. The jury will begin sentencing deliberations in his case today.
Benavides was arrested in 2015 on multiple counts of sexual assault and compelling prostitution after San Antonio police alleged he forced his clients to have sex with him to pay for legal services. Benavides was also accused of recording his encounters.
Benavides later surrendered his law license in lieu of discipline from the State Bar of Texas in 2016 after he was indicted on 35 felony counts in 2016. Because of pre-trial publicity, Benavides' criminal trial was moved from San Antonio to Floresville.
On the opening day of Benavides' trial, a video was played that was so graphic, a juror fainted as the panel left the courtroom for a brief recess.
The video was played so that only the jury could see it. In the video, a woman could be heard crying “Mark, you're hurting me.” The jurors looked so uncomfortable that Judge Dick Alcala sent them out for a break.
Benavides' assaults allegedly began in 2009, but police couldn't make an arrest because they couldn't corroborate the allegations against him, according to his arrest warrant.
None of the victims knew each other, but they all said Benavides was their lawyer and that he made them have sex with him and video recorded the encounters. And all of them said Benavides has a distinctive tattoo of the scales of justice on his back, according to the warrant.
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