Home-detention sentence for spousal rape is a 'sucker punch to the gut,' victim says
An Indiana judge is under fire for a home-confinement sentence in the case of an Indianapolis man accused of drugging his then-wife and raping her while she slept.
Judge Kurt Eisgruber sentenced the defendant, David Wise, on May 16 to eight years of home detention and imposed an additional 12-year suspended sentence, the Indianapolis Star and the Los Angeles Times report. Wise, 52, will wear a GPS device and will be allowed to go to work.
Wise was convicted on April 30 of one count of rape and five counts of criminal deviate conduct, all Class B felonies, the Indianapolis Star says.
The victim, Mandy Boardman, told the Indianapolis Star that the sentence was a “sucker punch to the gut.” She told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to be identified so others could see “that I am a normal person who is fighting for the same thing they’re fighting for.”
Wise “never once apologized, never once expressed any type of remorse, and his explanation for admittedly drugging me was because I was snippy,” Boardman told the Los Angeles Times. “Women, don’t get snippy out there; you might get drugged and raped.”
Boardman told police in May 2011 that her husband had been drugging and raping her for at least three years—something she discovered after finding three sex videos on Wise’s cellphone in the fall of 2008. Boardman said she didn’t come forward sooner because she didn’t want her children to grow up without a father, the Indianapolis Star says.
According to the Indianapolis Star, defendants convicted of a class B felony rape in Indiana don’t have to serve prison time if they have no prior felonies.
Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Courtney Curtis said the state had sought prison time. “Anyone who has the gall or the selfishness to invade someone else’s body does not deserve to sit at home on the couch or to be with any member of his family,” Curtis said. She told the Los Angeles Times that Wise admitted at trial that he had the videos, but did not admit to sexual assault. He also said he drugged his wife because “she was snippy and it made her nicer when he drugged her,” Curtis said.
The former prosecutor in the case against Wise is defending Eisgruber, however, the Indianapolis Star reports in a different article. Eric Schmadeke handled the case until he switched this year to private practice.
Schmadeke said he believed Wise deserved time in prison, but Eisgruber is a “man of integrity who cares deeply about victims, witnesses, defendants and attorneys who come before him in court.”
“I’ve never seen him take a sexual assault case as anything less than seriously,” Schmadeke said. “I’ve never gotten the impression, ever, that he doesn’t believe that rape, no matter who the victim is, should be punished.”
