Sandy MaloneNew York, NY – A career criminal who shouldn’t have been out of jail was arrested again after he allegedly followed a woman into her apartment building and raped her early on Saturday morning.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) said the victim told investigators that 30-year-old Jamel McIver followed her into her apartment building at about 1:20 a.m. on March 4 and forced her into a stairwell, WABC reported.
She told police that the suspect raped her and then forced her back out onto the street before he fled on foot.
Surveillance video from nearby the scene gave investigators a clear picture of the accused rapist and authorities circulated it to the media and asked for the public’s help, WABC reported.
NYPD said that stepfamily members of McIver contacted authorities on Sunday after they saw his picture on the news.
McIver already had a pending attempted rape case against him that dates back to 2019, WABC reported.
He was accused of attempted rape after breaking into a 16-year-old girl’s bedroom in the Bronx while she was sleeping on April 8, 2019, the New York Post reported.
Police said the girl told investigators that McIver threatened her and made her fondle him.
Tips from neighbors led to McIver’s arrest in that case and he was brought up on a slew of charges including sexual contact with a minor, sexually motivated burglary, and attempted burglary, the New York Post reported.
His bail was set at $250,000 and McIver remained in custody, WABC reported.
But prosecutors in the Bronx failed to move forward with the case in a timely manner and McIver was released on his own recognizance in March of 2020 under New York’s speedy trial law.
Bronx prosecutors offered McIver a no jail plea deal if he completed two years of in-patient treatment, according to WABC.
McIver pleaded guilty to burglary and attempted burglary on August 3, 2022, the New York Post reported.
The deal prosecutors cut with McIver required that if he failed to complete treatment, he would be sent to prison for five years.
But at a compliance hearing a week before the March rape, neither the prosecutor nor the judge were made aware that McIver had flunked out of the treatment program he had most recently been placed in after testing positive for using K-2.
It turned out that the Osborne Association, the city-funded agency that put McIver in the rehab program, only notified the patient’s defense attorney, Jesse Hoberman-Kelly, after he was booted out, the New York Post reported.
Hoberman-Kelly later claimed he didn’t see the email and McIver remained free after the hearing, until he was arrested for rape on Sunday.
“The Osborne Association—which facilitates the drug/mental health treatment programming—did not tell our Office this information,” a spokesperson for Bronx District Attorney Darcell Clark told the New York Post in a statement.
“The defense did not notify us,” the spokesperson said. “We found out after the defendant was arrested in the Manhattan case.”
McIver was supposed to appear in court in the Bronx on Wednesday but he refused to get on the bus at Rikers Island, where he has been held in custody since he was arrested for rape on the Upper West Side, the New York Post reported.
The hearing went forward without the defendant and Bronx Judge Timothy Lewis put the defense attorney on the spot, demanding to know how Hoberman-Kelly had dropped the ball on failing to report that McIver had been kicked out of the Odyssey House treatment facility in East Harlem.
“Obviously at some point, there’s a failure to communicate with Mr. Hoberman-Kelly,” Lewis said. “When did you first become aware of that, Mr. Hoberman-Kelly?”
Hoberman-Kelly admitted that he had been informed by the Osborne Association before the Feb. 22 compliance hearing but told the judge he didn’t see the email until it was too late, the New York Post reported.
On Feb. 19, Odyssey House staffers acted on a tip and discovered that McIver was using the synthetic drug K-2.
A representative for the facility told the judge on March 8 that McIver was found “totally under the influence and at that point, there was some K-2 found in the area where he was staying and [had] two or three packs with him,” according to the New York Post.
So, they notified Hoberman-Kelly that his client had been kicked out of the facility.
Sources said that McIver flunked out of two other drug rehab programs before he was placed at Odyssey House in January.
Lewis held compliance hearings for McIver in September, November, and January, and it isn’t known why he wasn’t put in jail any of those times for flunking out of the two earlier rehab facilities, the New York Post reported.
Holly Matkin
