Jury clears prison caseworker accused of lying about rape

A prison caseworker accused of lying to federal investigators about being raped by an inmate has been acquitted by a Tucson jury.

Wynona Mixon told her supervisors she was sexually assaulted by an inmate on Aug. 12, 2011, but they didn’t believe her. Instead, she was accused of abusing her authority by getting sexual involved with the inmate and then lying about it. Mixon had worked in the federal system about 24 years, but after that day did not return to the penitentiary at 9300 S. Wilmot Road.

A panel of 11 jurors found her not guilty of four counts of sexual abuse, three counts of providing false statements to the government and one count of attempting to impede a federal investigation. Two jurors were excused late last week and only one alternate joined the panel when deliberations resumed Tuesday. 

“Thank God for the jury system,” said A. Bates Butler III, Mixon’s defense attorney. “They asked insightful questions, they asked intuitive questions and, had they not paid such attention and used their common sense, God knows what would have happened.”

Mixon could have faced up to two years in prison on each of the sexual abuse charges, and up to five years for each false statement charge. The maximum she could have received on the last count was 20 years.

Butler told jurors during the week-long trial that inmate Christopher Goins confronted Mixon with a letter opener before raping her in a staff bathroom. The high-security facility houses some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals, including many sex offenders.

Goins, whose extensive criminal history includes illegal weapons possession, slashing the throat of a female defense attorney and raping his female cousin at knife point, claims Mixon had consensual sex with him on more than one occasion before she accused him of raping her.

Goins, in 2014, filed a $13 million lawsuit that remains pending against Mixon and her supervisors, saying they failed to protect him.

“He alleges that her supervisors knew she was a sexual predator and that they allowed her to have access to inmates,” Butler said. “There’s just absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever.”

Mixon, 51, said she was confident the jury would find her not guilty of sexual abuse, but still was nervous about “all those other charges they piled up against me.”

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“They were just trying to get me on something,” she said. “But I believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ and so I knew the right thing would happen.”

Mixon used all of her retirement savings to pay for her defense.

“My daughter is 23 years old and, hopefully, I can get my retirement money back in a lawsuit so I can send her back to college,” she said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat told jurors during the proceedings that Mixon lied about being raped because she feared she’d been seen leaving an employee bathroom shortly before Goins also exited the otherwise unoccupied room.

Prosecutors, who could not be reached for comment after Tuesday's verdict, asked the jury to consider that Mixon did not report the alleged rape until more than two hours afterward, and that she sent routine work emails that morning. She also met with inmates in her office “as if nothing were amiss,” Wheat said during his opening statements.

As a case manager, Mixon helped the inmates line up programming, such as counseling and education classes. She had over 200 inmates under her supervision in August 2011.

Wheat said during the proceedings that, in addition to lying about the rape, Mixon also filed a “false claim” against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, alleging they neglected to provide employees with adequate security. She was also accused of lying to FBI employees who interviewed her afterward.

Butler said the case never should have been brought against his client in the first place.

“It’s frightening that they could indict someone on the basis of this kind of evidence,” he said. “She can resume her life now. It means that maybe she can heal from the post-traumatic stress, which started with the inmate and then was exacerbated by the government’s charges against her.”

The proceedings were held in Judge Jennifer Zipps’ courtroom at the U.S. District Court in Tucson.