Steven Mertz (nonfiction)

Pocono Mountain Regional Police officer Steven Mertz detained a woman, drunk at the wheel of her car, then threatened her with a DUI charge if she refused to have sex with him. She did so, intoxicated, against his patrol car. Then he blackmailed her with "their secret"—all admitted in testimony—demanding she have sex with him again lest he find his notes. He found them anyway.

This wasn't rape, jurors unanimously found, but merely taking a bribe—a lesser charge for which he was sentenced to 30 to 60 months in jail. They agreed with his defense that "his role as her arresting officer did not constitute as an imbalance of power, nor did her impairment preclude her from being able to consent".

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

External links

• Cop acquitted of rape despite threatening drunk detainee with charges if she didn't give him sex @ Boing Boing

• Poconos police corporal charged with raping driver after DUI stop

• [] @ Wikipedia