Lucius Kearney, A Police Officer, Guilty of Child Sexual Abuse

Friday, September 27, 2024

Defendant was a Metropolitan Police Department Officer

            WASHINGTON – Lucius Kearney, 52, of Washington, D.C., was found guilty today by a D.C. Superior Court jury of first-degree sexual abuse of a child, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves. The sexual assault took place nearly 20 years ago when the victim was 15 years old, and the defendant was approximately 33 years old. The Honorable Maribeth Raffinan scheduled sentencing for December 10, 2024.

            According to the government’s evidence at trial, in the 2005-2006 school year, when the victim was in tenth grade, she met the defendant – then a Fourth District Metropolitan Police Department officer – while doing a school project. At their initial meeting at the Fourth District Police Station, the defendant and victim exchanged phone numbers and began communicating about the school project. Their conversations turned sexual, and ultimately the defendant engaged in sexual acts with the victim in his truck near a D.C. public library, where the victim was volunteering to complete her high school community service hours.

            The victim disclosed the abuse in 2020 after randomly encountering the defendant while he was on duty in the area where the victim lived. Kearney’s body worn camera showed that after this coincidental encounter, which occurred in 2019, Kearney ran the tags from the victim’s car and said to himself:  “How in the world did I f**king manage to do that?!?”  The defendant was charged in 2021.

            This case was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Peter Taylor and Richard Kelley of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.