It took 45 hours over the course of four days for an all-white jury in Oklahoma City to decide whether or not they should convict former police officer Daniel Holtzclaw of sexual assault on the word of 13 black women. On Thursday night, the jury opted to believe (most of) them.

There is perhaps no bigger test of how blind justice could possibly be than asking any American jury – especially one that is all white and includes eight men – to believe 13 black women over a former police officer and supposed hero football player. It’s easy enough to point to cases where the police were acquitted. And yet, against all expectations this time, justice was blind.

Holtzclaw was found guilty for five counts of rape, 13 other counts of sexual assault – including six of sexual battery – against eight of the women who testified against him. In what felt like a unique moment, justice was not fooled by the aggressive defense mounted by Holtzclaw’s attorney, Scott Adams, which exploited racist stereotypes, class bias and fears about the majority-black east side community from which Holtzclaw culled his victims.

As in many sexual assault cases, Adams wanted Holtzclaw to cease being on trial and instead to put 13 black women on trial in the minds of the jury members, presumed guilty of some sin great enough to negate their victimization.

For seven months before that jury was chosen – from December 2013 through June 2014 – Holtzclaw targeted women with suspected or documented substance abuse problems during his patrols, stopping them in their cars, in parking lots or walking alone at night in their neighborhoods. His near-rote routine, as described in court by multiple victims, aligned neatly with what those without much interaction with the police would assume is proper procedure; in reality, it was a menacing cover for a serial sexual predator seeking victims who would not be believed or missed.

Some women testified that he would escort them home and assault them there, intimidating them into performing sex acts, or drive them to secluded locations to rape them.

Holtzclaw seemingly escalated his assaults, grew bolder with each encounter for which he faced no consequences. One woman from early in his spree, identified as “J”, testified that she feared that Holtzclaw was going to kill her; she detailed a sickening encounter where she was forced to expose her breasts and genitals while Holtzclaw fondled himself during a traffic stop then forced her to perform oral sex on him with his gun in plain view.

The 13th accuser, who was 17 years old at the time that she was raped on her mother’s front porch, was asked why she didn’t report it immediately to the police. “What kind of police do you call on the police?” she said.

Hannah Giorigis wrote in March:

To be a “good rape victim” is to immediately report your assault to the police (even knowing you will likely never see “justice”), but to be a good black person is to avoid the police entirely because your life quite literally depends on it. The tightrope walk is impossible.

Yet the women assaulted by Holtzclaw courageously walked the tightrope and took the risk, facing their accuser and trusting a system that has failed so many brown women before it.

Many women of color don't go to the police after sexual assault for a reason | Hannah Giorgis Read more

With his conviction, the justice system has done something it historically hasn’t done very well: this time, the justice system has protected black women victims of sexual assault. And it’s about time. Police misconduct, sexual assault and abuse of authority targeting women is not new, but punishment and accountability have been all too rare.

Defense strategies like Adams’s are a key reason that accountability continues to be so rare. Adams’s arguments fed into disgusting stereotypes about women and, more specifically, black female sexuality – so much so that even women jurors in many cases are swayed to accept the mythology that victims of sexual assault are responsible for their own rapes.

The jury didn’t accept five of the 13 women’s stories, and delivered not guilty verdicts for 18 of the 36 counts Holtzclaw was originally facing. For those women – and for many of the rest of us – every count mattered. For now, we have some measure of justice; Holtzclaw is going to jail. But the split decision shows that, as a society and for victims of sexual assault, we still have much further to go.