9-year term for driver who raped inmate at Missouri rest stop while taking her to St. Paul jail

A 37-year-old former transport employee has been sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a Washington inmate at a Missouri rest stop while driving her to a Minnesota jail.

Rogeric Hankins, 37, drove inmates arrested on out-of-state warrants as part of his job with the now-defunct Inmate Services Corp. of Arkansas.

"The defendant sexually abused and violently assaulted a woman in his custody, exploiting his authority and depriving this survivor of her constitutional right to bodily integrity," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement issued after Hankins was sentenced Tuesday.

The prosecution said Hankins picked up a pretrial inmate from an Olympia, Wash., jail March 31, 2020. Three days later, he stopped the van at a gas station in Joplin, Mo., and brought the victim to the women's bathroom. He then led her into the men's bathroom, ordered her into the stall farthest from the door and raped her.

Before sentencing, prosecutors pushed in a court filing for Hankins to be imprisoned for 10 years.

"There are no words to aptly convey the depravity of [his] conduct and the severe trauma it caused [his victim]," the filing read. "[Hankins] acted with impunity, believing ... he would get away with this violent, predatory conduct."

Defense attorney Ian Lewis argued in a follow-up filing for Hankins to receive a seven-year prison term.

"Mr. Hankins has not only taken responsibility for his offense, he has also demonstrated he is remorseful, and this conduct is not indicative of what his behavior will be hereafter," Lewis wrote, adding that his client has no other felony convictions on his record.

Hankins' sentence includes three years of supervision upon his release from prison.

In connection with an earlier incident involving a different driver, a lawsuit was filed in April alleging that Ramsey County and its Sheriff's Office contracted with Inmate Services Corp. whose employee raped a woman — one of many he allegedly sexually assaulted while in his custody.

Marquet D. Johnson attacked a 38-year-old inmate while he was driving her from Texas back to Minnesota in June 2019, according the suit filed in U.S. District Court.

During a stop in Oklahoma, Johnson allowed her to use the bathroom. He walked her into the truck stop bathroom while she was handcuffed and forced a sex act. While in Iowa just shy of the Minnesota border, Johnson took the woman into a rest stop bathroom and forced her to have intercourse.

The St. Paul woman's suit names as defendants Ramsey County and its Sheriff's Office, Johnson and Randy Cagle Jr., who owned Inmate Services Corp. It seeks $9 million in compensatory damages and another $4 million in punitive damages for what she contends was "cruel and unusual punishment" and other violations of her rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Johnson is in federal custody and scheduled to go on trial in March 2024 on charges that he raped a female detainee at gunpoint in November 2019 while driving her from New Mexico to Colorado.

He has not been charged in connection with the allegations, but the investigation in New Mexico alerted prosecutors "to more than a dozen other alleged victims of Mr. Johnson's conduct" across the country while he was employed by Inmate Services in 2019 and 2020, according to a filing in March in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque.