AUSTIN, Texas – A Texas prosecutor is defending her office's 2009 plea deal in a sexual assault case involving a man now suspected of a series of killings in Indiana.
Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said in a statement Monday that Darren Vann received a plea deal of five years in prison because the case was weak. She says a delayed outcry resulted in lost DNA evidence and the victim was inconsistent.
Lehmberg said Vann's criminal history then "revealed no prior history of sexual assault and no prior convictions."
Lehmberg spokesman Rudy Magallanes said a 2007 Indiana didn't appear in Vann's criminal history. In that case, Vann served a year in prison for placing a woman in a chokehold, dousing her with gasoline and threatening to set her on fire.
