Juror faints: A juror in a case against a former attorney accused of trading legal services for sex fainted Tuesday after watching a graphic sex video the defendant recorded during a tryst with a 29-year-old client — who was sitting in the Texas courtroom as the footage was played, the San Antonio-Express News reported.
For upon |The trial of Mark Benavides — a 48-year-old former San Antonio attorney charged with continuous trafficking of persons — opened Tuesday in Wilson County after being moved from Bexar County due to intense media coverage. The first day of proceedings got off to an unexpected start when the woman testified that Benavides forced her to have anal sex while recording the encounter.
“Mark, it hurts!” the woman cried on the video played in court for jurors. “You’re hurting me … Don’t be so rough.”Juror faints.
Benavides then repeatedly told the woman to “come back here” as she continued to cry. As the footage played in court, the woman pressed her hands against her face and wept.
The explicit scene caused jurors to visibly react, prompting District Judge Dick Alcala to excuse them from the courtroom for a break. A woman on the jury then fainted near the door as she exited. She was later replaced by an alternate, according to the newspaper.
The woman in the video testified that she and Benavides had sex on the same day he was appointed by a court to work as her attorney in July 2014. She and Benavides would then head to a motel in San Antonio, where he instructed her sexually and recorded the encounter. Benavides also asked her at the end of the recordings to say “bye” to the camera, she testified.
“Sometimes he would ask me my name, how old I was, and ask, ‘What are you going to do?’” she testified.
On the footage, the woman would answer: “I’m going to [expletive] my lawyer.”
Benavides has first arrested in November 2015 while a state district judge candidate for allegedly using force or coercion to force at least nine female clients into prostitution. Female defendants in prostitution cases told police that Benavides promised them to lessen their legal issues or get their cases thrown out altogether after the encounters, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the newspaper.
Benavides was indicted earlier this month for continuous trafficking of persons in connection with four women between 2012 and 2015. That marks the fifth open case against the now-disbarred attorney, who also faces charges of sexual assault of a child and other crimes, court records show.
If convicted, Benavides faces up to 99 years in prison. Court records indicate he’s seeking probation, but prosecutors have indicated that they plan to seek that any subsequent sentences be served consecutively, KSAT reports.
The woman is seen in the video played in court also testified that Benavides told her the footage — which was recorded during all but one of at least 10 meetings at a motel — was “just for him,” KSAT reports.
The article was originally published here.
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