By Alana Bleimann
SACRAMENTO – Three witnesses—including a current and former wife—testified this week in defendant Rudolph Henderson’s violation of probation and bail hearing in Sacramento County Superior Court, but the current wife was deemed not credible by the judge, who sent Henderson back to jail on no bail.
Henderson has past charges of sexual assault and is currently a registered sex offender. Despite this fact, his wife of eight years defended his violation of probation and appeared to not tell the whole truth on the stand.
In his terms of probation, Henderson is not allowed to be within 100 yards of the protected party, the alleged victim, who is also his ex-wife.
While on the witness stand, Henderson’s ex-wife testified that he had come within 100 yards of her and her son’s presence in October of this year, when she “was leaving the house and he [Henderson] came driving through, he blew the horn and waved at my son and drove off.”
At this time, the victim already had a protective order against the defendant and the victim was unaware that Henderson was out of custody.
When the victim was leaving her residence she was walking from the house down a path to the car on the ground level, going toward a parking lot across the street with her two sons (13 and 19 years old) leading the way.
The victim first noticed the defendant in a car driving in front of them when her youngest son told her to “stop, there’s Rudolph” after the defendant honked his horn, at around 10:23 am.
In response to her son’s shouts, she looked up and saw the defendant. Her son “was unsure of what was happening” and he was “scared.” “My son was warning me, he was afraid,” the victim stated.
As the defendant was leaving, the victim ran to take multiple photos of him in order to have proof that he was in violation of her protective order.
In court, Deputy District Attorney Kelly Clark and Assistant Public Defender Amanda Jeanette Templeton argued over the location of the victim and the location of the defendant. It was unclear whether or not the defendant came within 100 yards of the victim and if the victim actually saw him.
By using Google Earth map images, they were able to confirm that the only individual who actually saw the defendant was the youngest son, as the victim “never heard the car honk” and “wasn’t paying attention.”
Public Defender Templeton even claimed to “ believe that this is the son’s version of events not her [the victim’s] own.”
After the victim’s statement, Officer Matthew Keyser testified that he spoke to the victim and her sons who said that “her ex-husband was in violation of her restraining order and he was on her property” and that the sons saw the victim “two streets over.”
The officer was shown the same Google Earth map as the victim was shown in order to clarify the distance from the street to where the victim was standing. Keyser was able to identify the victim’s address and clarify that “her entrance faced eastbound and the driveways are on the north side. North of that, there is a small park.”
Most notably, Keyser claimed that he did not measure how far the car would have been to the house, making the alleged distance of 100 yards unknown.
The final witness to enter the courtroom was the defendant’s current wife of eight years.
This witness knew that her husband was going to be released from jail in early October of this year because she “goes out to visit him twice a week” at the jail and was always informed of any new information regarding the case and his whereabouts.
She picked him up from the jail in her silver Toyota at approximately 10:30 a.m., as “every time he gets arrested I pick him up,” she stated. After he was picked up, the witness claimed they “went home to my house” and proceeded to “sit back and relax.”
Templeton asked if the witness knew the victim, the former wife, and if they spoke often. “She’s called me on the phone….. told me that they were gonna get married again…she called me with the lie…well she lies about Rudy….she is a liar, she is dishonest,” the witness claimed.
The witness continued to stumble over her words, adding “potentially” and “maybe” and “could have” to her statements.
In response to the district attorney’s questions, the witness claimed to have never spoken to the victim about this case but then retracted and said, “Well, yeah I’ve talked to him about it, possibly.”
The current wife said that from the moment he stepped out of jail to the moment he was arrested, the defendant and she were together, claiming the victim’s statements to be false.
The district attorney then proceeded to play an audio clip from late October of this year. In the audio, it can be heard:
Witness: “I tells you to keep your ass at home and stop it, you ain’t got no business.”
Defendant: “Why you keep telling me stupid s**t?”
Witness: “Because if you were not in the south side it would not have happened.”
Defendant: “I don’t really wanna hear all that s**t what are you tellin’ me….you say s**t that don’t even make sense.”
Witness: “You was over there [the victim’s apartment] tryn’ get some p****y.”
The witness claimed this was only her “fussing” at him as she usually does in order to “make him understand don’t ever do it…don’t ever do it.”
“I fuss at Mr. Henderson all the time. I accuse him of things all the time. Not because he does it but because if he does and I find out it’s gonna be all bad,” the witness admitted.
The witness was excused from the courtroom and the district attorney and the public defender made their closing arguments to Judge Steve White.
It was argued that the defendant was within the 100-yard violation and that there are other “real legal issues” at hand.
When looking at the defense exhibit, that the defendant was seen two streets over from the apartment complex, the witness could not confirm where that was from the victim’s apartment. It is very rare that two streets over is within 100 yards, Templeton argued.
Additionally, Officer Keyser never measured the distances in question, even though he could have. Without this, the court cannot confirm that the defendant was 100 yards away from the apartment,” the defense argued.
At the end of the session, Judge White said that the testimony of the current wife/witness was not credible and that there is a direct contradiction between her testimony and her conversation with the defendant at the jail in late October of this year.
However, Judge White said the testimony of the victim, the former wife, is credible and there is more than sufficient evidence that the defendant was within 100 yards in violation of the protective order.
Judge White found that the defendant was in violation of the terms of probation and that further proceedings should be set for December of this year. In regard to bail, Judge White gave the defendant no bail and he’ll remain in custody.
Alana Bleimann is a junior at the University of San Francisco majoring in Sociology with a minor in Criminal Justice Studies. She is from Raleigh, North Carolina.
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