Staff Editorial: "Searching for Justice"

Alleged rapist Troy Graves pled guilty to five counts of sexual assault in Fort Collins, Colo., last Friday.

Graves, whom law enforcement officials believe to be the Center City rapist, confessed to the crimes with full knowledge of his future sentence -- life in prison without parole.

However, whether Graves will serve his sentence in Colorado is still contingent upon the Philadelphia officials.

Currently, city officials may be arranging another plea bargain for Graves -- a guilty plea on all counts in exchange for a reduction of the sentence from the death penalty to life in prison, a sentence which would be served in Colorado.

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham has not confirmed that the deal has made, saying instead that all options were still open to the court system.

If such arrangement has not been made, it would behoove Abraham and her team to refuse the deal, choosing instead to bring Graves to Philadelphia, and requiring that he be tried for the Center City rapist's crimes.

The Center City rapist terrorized women in the city from 1997 to 1999. He has been accused of five sexual assaults, as well as the 1998 murder of Wharton graduate student Shannon Schieber.

DNA evidence has connected the Fort Collins rapist, who officials now believe to be Graves, with the Center City rapist.

While the Schieber family has made it clear that they do not seek the death penalty sentence for the serial rapist, they do want closure.

The family of the then 23 year-old woman has spent over four years waiting for officials to pinpoint the criminal. As the murder hit one of our own, the Penn campus has also spent the last years in turmoil.

After five years since the start of the rapes and four years since Scheiber's murder, the time has come for an end to the rapist's terror and the beginning of a cleansing for the family and our school.

Whether Graves is found to be the criminal is yet to be determined, but we strongly urge the Philadelphia courts to bring Graves to trial and to find a swift resolution to this lengthy search.

Let us hope that if Graves is the Center City rapist, he will also plead guilty in Philadelphia, sparing his victims from the trauma created by bearing witness at the trail.

Now that the Philadelphia Police Force have named a perputrator to these heinous crimes, the Philadelphia courts must enable the case to finally be brought to rest under a sentence which will never allow Graves to commit such atrocities again.

The Center City rapist must be brought to justice.

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