Adrian Cortes was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 60 years in prison following a trial presided over by Lead Prosecutor Deborah Bankhead and 2nd Chair Leighton D’Antoni. The case was investigated by the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas County District Attorney's Office SAKI Unit, with DA Investigator Jon Wakefield and Kelly Paul leading the charge.
The conviction stems from a harrowing incident in 2001 when a woman was abducted while loading her 3-year-old child into their car. The assailant, armed with a sharp object, forced her into the vehicle and drove to an undisclosed location where he sexually assaulted her in the presence of her toddler. After the assault, he left the woman and her child in the car before fleeing the scene.
Despite the victim reporting the assault immediately and undergoing a sexual assault examination, the evidence went untested for nearly two decades until it was processed as part of the Sex Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) program in 2019. This led to a breakthrough when the DNA evidence matched an unsolved case from 1996 involving another sexual assault on a pregnant woman who was threatened at gunpoint while on her way to work.
The defendant's DNA was identified through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) due to an unrelated conviction, providing the crucial link between the two assaults and leading to his arrest and subsequent conviction.
