Judge Margo Northrup is considering whether to allow incestophile rapist and failed Republican Legislative candidate Joel Koskan plea his way out of jail time and registration as a sex offender after raping his adopted Indian daughter for years.
Perhaps Judge Northrup will weigh Koskan’s crime and punishment against that received a year ago by one Nathan David Hankins of Rapid City. Hankins raped his half-sister when she was eight years old and he was 25. The child reported the crime to her mother in October 2019. A Lawrence County grand jury indicted Hankins in December 2019 on two counts of first-degree rape of a child under the age of 13, a Class C felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. The trial jury found Hankins guilty in May 2021, and in October 2021, Judge Eric Strawn sentenced Hankins to 50 years in the Pen with 25 years suspended.
There are key differences between Hankins’s case and Koskan’s:
- Hankins raped his half-sister; Koskan raped his adopted daughter.
- Hankins committed his crime in the summer of 2018, when his half-sister was eight, while staying overnight in the child’s mother’s home. Koskan committed his crime over several years, while his daughter lived in his house and after she left for college.
- Gross part: Hankins touched and penetrated the child’s vagina with his hand, mouth, and tongue. Koskan had full sex with his daughter, putting her at risk of impregnation.
- Hankins has a previous conviction for fourth-degree rape in 2014 and escaped another charge of raping a minor in 2018 after his defense lawyer raised concerns about evidence seized from an abortion clinic. Koskan is not known to have any prior sex-crime convictions.
- Hankins pleaded not guilty. Koskan was working on a plea deal two months before the authorities publicly charged him.
A man with a previous rape conviction rapes his half-sister during the summer of 2018 and gets 25 years in prison. Another man with a clean record rapes his adopted daughter for years, and the state is willing to let him off with no jail time. Judge Northrup, what do you think of that?
Related Reprehensibility: Hankins was indicted in December 2019 on federal charges of possessing child pornography.
Fitz will be one hell of a Judge. Perhaps he can coach the other judges in the 4th on how to be a good judge.
Judge Northrop should be scrutinized regularly for retention.
Would love to hear from a Tribal Lawyers View on all of this. If she is a registered or eligibal Tribal member, that was adopted to a “non-tribal” family, shouldn’t there be something to protect her under the ICWA during those years as a minor child? Especially if the ICWA “had a say” for her placement into that family?