Rape case against Cleotha Abston-Henderson to go to trial in 2024, Fletcher case to follow

Cleotha Abston-Henderson is slated to have the first of his criminal cases go to trial in early 2024, Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Lee V. Coffee said Friday morning.

Abston-Henderson was prominently arrested and charged with kidnapping and killing Memphis teacher Eliza Fletcher in September 2022, but that case will not reach trial until a disposition is reached in a case that is alleged to have happened over a year earlier.

That case stems from the 2021 rape of Alicia Franklin and charges Abston-Henderson with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping and unlawful possession of a firearm as a convicted felon.

Shelby County Deputy District Attorney Paul Hagerman said Tuesday the fact that Franklin's rape took place almost a year earlier was part of the calculus in having that case set earlier.

"Come to understand that we even refer to this case as the Eliza Fletcher case, but in fact, this defendant is charged with two heinous and serious crimes," Hagerman said. "Miss Franklin deserves her day in court, as Eliza Fletcher and her family deserve their day in court. We believe they should both happen sooner rather than later, and this was one step to making that actually happen."

Abston-Henderson was indicted for the rape days after his arrest in connection to the Fletcher abduction. Franklin said she met him on a dating app and was eventually raped.

Franklin submitted to a rape kit, and gave police Abston-Henderson's name, contact information and social media profiles. The rape kit was submitted to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation without a rush order, and TBI said it was placed in a queue of unknown suspects.

That kit was not tested until June 2022 and the results came back in late August. A hit on CODIS, a federal DNA database, was returned on Sept. 5, 2022, after Abston-Henderson had been arrested in connection to the Fletcher killing.

In the wake of Abston-Henderson's arrest, Franklin sued the City of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department. In that lawsuit, she said the department did not conduct a thorough investigation of her rape. That case was dismissed in Shelby County Circuit Court, and her attorney said he plans to appeal the dismissal.

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Abston-Henderson recently was assigned new attorneys after the Shelby County public defender's office discovered a conflict of interest in representing him. Those new attorneys, Hagerman said, have worked quickly to parse through discovery, but the Fletcher case involves more evidence than others Abston-Henderson is facing.

"Rather than waiting for their investigation to be complete on the murder case and just waiting and waiting, we want to move it forward," Hagerman said. "...[The rape case] alone, carries 100 years for this defendant. So, it's a serious case and Miss Franklin deserves her day in court. We are intending to bring this thing to a resolution however long it takes, but we'd prefer sooner rather than later."

The Fletcher case, Coffee said, should be tried by the end of 2024.

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Rape case against Cleotha Abston-Henderson to go to trial early 2024