For years, prosecutors say, Eric Scott Kindley was a powerful man in his own universe.

Though he wasn't a licensed or regulated prisoner transport officer, he carried a gun. He held the key to the handcuffs. He drove across the country by himself, in his own van, without supervision, being paid by jails for transporting shackled prisoners -- sometimes a woman by herself -- from one facility to another. He was free to stop when he wanted and where he wanted. And, the prosecutors say, he was free to take advantage of his power whenever he felt like it.

Now, the tables have turned and he is the prisoner.

Beginning today, the 51-year-old Kindley, who is from California, will face a federal jury. He's accused of abusing his authority during some of those transports by forcing female prisoners to comply with his sexual demands, after tormenting them with stories of things done to previous prisoners.

Opening statements are scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. before Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. in his Little Rock courtroom. The trial, for which a jury was seated Friday, could last up to two weeks.

Two women at the heart of the indictment are expected to testify that they were assaulted by Kindley when he transported them across Arkansas, one in 2014 and the other in 2017.

He is charged with depriving one of them of her civil rights when he transported her through Arkansas on Feb. 15-16 of 2014 from Victoria County, Texas, to Jackson County, Okla., on an out-of-state arrest warrant. He is accused of depriving the other one of her civil rights on Jan. 28, 2017, while transporting her on an out-of-state arrest warrant from Shelby County, Ala., to Apache County, Ariz.

It will be his first time in front of a jury, though the FBI has said he is suspected of assaulting more than 100 women in various jurisdictions during 15 years of operating prisoner transport businesses.

His indictment alleges that in the 2014 case, he forced the woman, then 33, to perform oral sex on him, constituting aggravated sexual abuse and kidnapping, after he parked the van, got out and opened the sliding door on the driver's side, where the handcuffed woman sat in the back seat. The indictment doesn't say where in the Eastern District of Arkansas the assault is believed to have occurred, but other court documents say he drove her to a "secluded location," possibly in a park or forest, and assaulted her "under cover of darkness" after pretending to be lost, "as he did time and time again with several other females he transported."

The woman told FBI agents that she feared for her life and performed the act as she remained handcuffed. She was later dropped off in Oklahoma, where she was wanted on a failure-to-appear charge in an embezzlement case and on a driving while intoxicated case. She told her sister about the assault after she served her sentence and was able to leave Oklahoma nearly two years later, documents show.

Court documents allege that in the 2017 case, Kindley committed aggravated sexual abuse, kidnapping and the crime of using a dangerous weapon during a crime of violence by reaching inside the 27-year-old woman's underwear while her legs were shackled together. The woman told authorities that Kindley stopped his van on a dark, deserted road in Pope County to let her urinate, uncuffing one of her hands but leaving her legs shackled together. She said he threw her against the side of the van and then put his hand down her leggings and underwear, demanding oral sex, until she screamed. She said that caused coyotes to howl, and Kindley ordered her back inside the van.

After the woman was delivered to the jail in Apache County, Ariz., where she was wanted on a burglary warrant, she told local authorities what had happened, documents show. Another woman in the same jail, who had also recently been transported by Kindley, reported him as well, prompting a jailer to call the FBI.

THE INVESTIGATION

Prosecutors say that since an FBI investigation began on Feb. 8, 2017, agents have established that Kindley "engaged in sexual predatory behavior throughout his career as a private prisoner transport officer."

Court documents say the FBI tracked down women whom Kindley had transported alone and for longer periods of time than the route should have required.

"Each time the FBI contacted one of these females, the agent simply inquired about her experience during a prison transport. ... With few exceptions, each female articulated, at the very least, that [Kindley] made sexually inappropriate comments. In many instances, the female disclosed that [he] engaged in unwanted sexual conduct, be it groping or nonconsensual penetration," prosecutors said in a court document.

That was how agents learned of the assault on the 2014 Arkansas victim, the document states, noting that in trying to reach her, agents first contacted her sister, who told them that she had heard about the assault years earlier.

"As the accounts of the other victims reveal," prosecutors wrote, "for his own prurient interest and without any law enforcement purpose, the defendant was prone to watch the females urinate, and, on a few occasions, showed an interest in menstruation. He groped, fondled, and in many instances, raped those female transports whom he knew would not fight back, either because they were physically restrained or because they were too scared to scream or resist for a variety of reasons."

Prosecutors say numerous victims have said Kindley intimidated them into not reporting him by leading them to believe that he was a federal marshal or a police officer and that he was friends with officers and jailers along the route who wouldn't be receptive to complaints from "low-life" prisoners.

In reality, prosecutors say, Kindley was careful to watch his own back when around legitimate jailers and law enforcement officers, knowing he would be the one facing repercussions if his behavior was discovered. They say he only stopped for overnight stays at jails where his passengers had to take showers, and that he kept a scarf and hat in his front passenger seat, arranged in such a way to make it appear from afar that a female officer was accompanying him.

TRIAL WITNESSES

In a pre-trial filing, prosecutors Fara Gold and Maura White, both with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, described details of "seven other acts of sexual assault, as well as evidence of eight crimes, wrongs or other acts" that they wanted jurors to hear about, to demonstrate a pattern of conduct showing Kindley's motive and intent. The law allows the introduction of such testimony in sexual assault cases.

But defense attorney John Wesley Hall of Little Rock argued that if jurors were to hear about all the other instances cited by prosecutors, it would deny Kindley his right to due process and a fair trial.

Marshall resolved the issue by allowing prosecutors to present testimony from only five of the 15 proposed witnesses -- three of seven women the FBI says were sexually assaulted in a similar manner as described by the women in the Arkansas case, and two of the witnesses to what are described as Kindley's other "bad acts."

Marshall said he wouldn't permit two of the alleged sexual assault victims to testify because their stories are too different from the women in the Arkansas case. One of them knew Kindley and said he assaulted her in a home; the other's account is "light on specifics," according to Marshall.

He said the accounts of the other alleged sexual assault victims bear "striking similarities" to the allegations involving the two women at the heart of the Arkansas case, making each potential witness's testimony "probative," or helpful for purposes of establishing proof in the Arkansas case. But, he said, the weight of allowing testimony from all five would be prejudicial to Kindley.

It "would compromise Kindley's due process rights, virtually guaranteeing a conviction based on the alleged prior acts rather than the charged crimes," Marshall said.

Similarly, the judge said he would only allow the testimony of two of the other proposed eight witnesses. He noted that in combination with the testimony of the three who say they were assaulted, "the volume of this evidence would unfairly prejudice Kindley and increase the likelihood of an emotion-driven verdict."

Among the 17 witnesses whom prosecutors propose to call is an FBI expert on cell-site analysis, who is expected to testify about Kindley's cellphone use during transports of the two women across Arkansas, to show how agents pinpointed his location during those times. Another proposed expert witness is a DNA analyst and forensic examiner at the FBI who is expected to testify that items seized from Kindley's van, and portions of the van, tested positive for the presence of semen that was matched to him.

Prosecutors also plan to call computer forensic examiners for the department and for the FBI, to discuss forensic examinations of Kindley's electronic devices, which were seized during the execution of search warrants.

Other law enforcement officers are expected to testify about standard law enforcement practices regarding the search and transport of female arrestees in custody.

In court documents describing the accounts of the seven women whom prosecutors wanted to testify as sexual assault victims was that of a petite 40-year-old woman who was transported from Marin County, Calif., to Apache County, Ariz., on a warrant in a driving under the influence case.

She said she was handcuffed and restrained by a belly chain and that Kindley raped her at gunpoint during each of several stops during the transport. She reported that each time, he kept the top half of her body in the van and pulled her shackled lower body outside the van, then pulled her pants down, unzipped his pants and stepped through her shackles to assault her. She said he told her: "This is how it works. I can blow your brains out and no one would know because there is only one witness, and that's me."

Prosecutors said Kindley forced the woman to sleep beside him that night in a "spooning position" on a blow-up mattress in the back of the van, which he parked at a travel center.

When he dropped her off at the jail, she told FBI agents, "he acted as though they were in a relationship" and gave her his email address. The document says she gave him two fake email addresses, which FBI agents later found saved in the "Notes" app on his iPhone.

Prosecutors said that woman's encounter with Kindley is part of an indictment pending against him in the Central District of California.

The accounts described in court documents involved women ranging in age from 22 to 53. Prosecutors said that in cases in which the women weren't assaulted, there was "some version of a show of strength by the victim."

For example, they said one woman told agents that while Kindley drove her from California to New Mexico in 2016 to face an outstanding warrant of possessing methamphetamine, she believed he was planning to assault her, so she let him know that she was "very familiar with firearms because her family members had served both state and federal prison time for 'trafficking' and murder. She further told the defendant that if anything happened to her during the transport, her uncles and cousins would find and kill him."

Another woman, who was 23 when Kindley transported her in 2012, told agents that she kicked him in the stomach to ward off a sexual attack and, after he pulled a gun, told him that "he should be prepared to use it," causing him to back down.

A Section on 03/09/2020