SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Alleged rapist walks out on $1 bail 11 years after crime occurred
Jun 7, 2018, 4:19 PM | Updated: 4:23 pm
Lawyer said faith led him to do free legal work. (AP)
(AP)
A man who allegedly kidnapped a woman in downtown Seattle and raped her 11 years ago walked out of the King County Superior Court on $1 bail this week.
KIRO Radio reporter Hanna Scott told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that according to court documents, a man identified as Johnny Lee Lay and an accomplice allegedly abducted a woman from Second Avenue and Pike Street in a Cadillac in 2007.
RELATED: State has massive backlog of rape test kits
Lay purportedly raped the woman in the backseat of the car, before taking to her a homeless camp outside of town and raping her a second time. He told the woman that he wanted her to work as a prostitute for him. When she responded that he would have to kill her first, he held a screwdriver to her head, threatening her with it.
After the men let her go, the woman went to the police and was given a rape kit. However, the kit was not submitted for testing until 2016 — nearly a decade after the rape.
According to Scott, this is just one of thousands of instances in which a rape kit has waited years to go to the lab.
“That was going on forever in our state — it was up to each individual police department when, or if, they would submit these, at all,” Scott said.
Scott further explained that the woman had learned the suspect’s name when she saw his ID fall out of the seat in the car. The man told her that he would kill her if she told anyone about him, but she went to the police anyway.
According to records, Lay, 48, has a long criminal history.
“Johnny Lay is a pretty much chronically homeless person,” Scott said. “He lived here in King County for a long time, had major issues with crack cocaine and other drugs. He is also a registered sex offender.”
In 2001, then 28-year-old Lay was convicted of third-degree sexual assault with a 14-year-old girl. He is currently registered as a child sex offender in Illinois, where he is listed as homeless.
When Lay appeared in court on Monday charged with first-degree sexual assault, prosecutors were seeking $500,000 bail based on his list of past convictions. Lay’s attorney, however, used the state’s delay in testing the rape evidence in the suspect’s favor.
“The defense attorney’s argument was, ‘Look, you can’t say he poses this danger to the community when you waited this many years,'” Scott explained.
King County Superior Court Judge John Chun granted Lay $1 bail.
As per court orders, Lay must check in with the Community Corrections Alternative Program on a daily basis and cannot get within 500 feet of the alleged victim.
Lay’s next appearance in court is scheduled for Tuesday, June 19.
