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Sherrice Iverson Case

A tragic case highlighting ethical, legal failures Jeremy Strohmeyer assaulted, murdered a 7-year-old girl while friend, David Cash, witnessed the act but did nothing. Sparked national outrage, inspired "Sherrice’s Law" proposals mandatory reporting.

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    Jeremy Strohmeyer, 19. a California teenager, sexually assaulted and strangled a7-year-old girl in the bathroom of a Nevaua casino while her father was gambling in the early morning hours of May 25, 1997. Mr. Strohmeyer is accused of following Sherrice Iverson into the women's restroom of the Primmadonra casino in Primm, Nev., a small town about 40 miles south of Las Vegas, and attacking her in a handicapped stall before strangling her ano breaking her neck. The gifl had been left to play in an arcaoe by her father, who was gambling elsewhere in the casino. Mr. Strohmeyer and his high school friend. David Cash, were in the arcaoe waiting for Mr. Cash's father to finish gambling. Mr. Cash - who witnessed the beginning of the attack and did not report it or intervene - has not been charged with any crime. Law: The Baa Samaritan A friend told David Cash he hao committed murder. Cash kept quiet ; Cathy BoothfBerkeley With reporting by David Willwerth/Berkeley; ; Time ; 09-07-1998 ; He was just an innocent bystander, he says. A bystander who peered over the top of a toilet stall and discovered-in the women's rest room of a casino on the California-Nevada border-his best friend Jeremy Strohmeyer, 18, struggling with a seven-year-old girl. He tapped his friend's head, he says, knocking off his hat, but couldn't get him to stop. So David Cash Jr. dec idea to take a walk. The scene in front of him could not have been any clearer a nearly 6-ft.-tall teenager and a little girl who didn't yet weigh 50 lbs. locked in the stall of the Primaoonna Resort casino at 3:47 in the morning. Ana yet Cash goes for a walk. He says nothing to the security guards. Less than half an hour later, Strohmeyer emerges a r d tells Cash he has molested and murdered the child. Cash, stunned, does not ask why. Accoroing to grand jury testimony obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Cash does venture one question: Had the little girl been aroused? By the time Sherrice Iverson's broken body is found at 5 a.m., stuffed in a toilet bowl, the two teenagers are already on their way to Las Vegas. Flash forward 15 months. This week Strohmeyer goes on trial in Las Vegas for the murder, kianapping and sexual assault of Sherrice Iverson. If convicted, he faces a possible death sentence, but his lawyer, Leslie Abramson, claims his confession was extracted by police while he was drugged. His friend Cash, now 19 and an aspiring nuclear engineer in his sophomore year at Berkeley, is not chargeo with anything, but he faces a trial of another kind, from angry Californians. The tale of the bad Samaritan has touched a nerve. They are angry that he told the Los Angeles Times he was not going "to lose sleep over som ebony eIse's problems ' Angry that he felt more sorry for Jeremy than for Sherrice because, after all, he had lost his best friend, and he did not know the girl or her family. Angry that he told the Times his notoriety had helped invigorate his social life—a comment he has since denied. And angry simply because he did nothing before or after the carnage. "What have I done?' he defiantly asked radio disk jockey Tim Conway Jr. one night during an impromptu call-in to Los Angeles station KLSX. “I have done nothing wrong." Even the police have tola him so. Cash said. "You s.o.b.l" screamed Conway in return. "I hope you burn in hell!!" Technically, Cash is right. In Nevada, California and in fact most of the U.S., doing nothing about a crime is no crime at all. Only a handful of states—including Vermont, Wisconsin a r d Minnesota-have "duty to assist" laws requiring those who witness a crime to offer aio a r d report it. Cash's callousness, though, has sparkeo a movement i r both California and Nevaoato pass something calleo "Sherrice's Law" to reouire witnesses to intervene and report cases of sexual assault against children. If necessary, says Najee Ali, spokesman for Sherrice's mother Yolanaa Manuel, advocates of the pro pose o law will go to the federal level to win passage. Meanwhile, they want revenge on Cash. Last week an unusual coalition of Muslim and Jewish activists, mothers a r d ranio deejays drove 400 miles north from Los Angeles to stage a protest in Berkeley's historic Sproul P las a in hopes of ostracizing the college sophomore—if not ejecting him altogether from the University of California system. "This is n t a guy who should be going to Berkeley. He should be going to San Quentin," said an irate Conway. "WeTe going to do everything possible to get his ass kickeo out of Berkeley and make his life as miserable as possible."

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    Yet Berkeley chancellor Robert Bertiahl made it clear last week that there would be no expulsion. "The public has been outraged not only by the crime itself but by reports of callous and reprehensible statements attributed to the student. I had the same reaction myself," he said. But rules are rules; Cash violated no law. “Most people seem to be under the impression that I was in a position to stop the heinous crime." Cash wrote in an angry e-mail sent to the San Francisco Chronicle and the Daily Californian. "I did not witness the allegeo molestation and murder." Staying mostly out of sight in his dorm room in modernistic Putnam Hall. Cash gave no interviews. His lawyer, Mark Werksman, however, said Cash "regrets" his statements to the Los Angeles Times. Werksman warned that lashing out in frustration to expel Cash is no answer either. Then the lawyer sighed. "What can I say? I can't explain or justify what he said." In Sproul Plaza, many students were at first horrified, then angry at Cash, and finally resigned to doing nothing. “I personally think he's a psycho, but I'm not sure there's legal grouno." said a student. Rajan Bhattacharyya. 19, a sophomore, says he knew Cash in junior high as a "normal bratty kid" and defended his legal right to remain in school: “I don't think this is the first time someone has left a crime victim at a scene or something like that. They can't just kick him out because they oon't like him “ Masoud Seberi, 22, a junior, agreed: "He's not here to uphold any moral standard or position. He came here to get ar education." A few were angry, however, or disconcerted by his presence. “I'm appalled to be at the same campus with this guy." said sophomore Keith Pallin. “A seven-year-old girl lost her life, and he's bragging about getting chicks?" Young women in the neighboring dorms said Cash gives them the creeps. Canoice Blagmon, 17, a freshman, said the baby-facec Cash had been sociable, helping other students in his dorm set up their computers—but now, she said, 'the dorm people are outraged." Stacy May, 17, another dorm neighbor, said she and others had decided to snub him. "Everybody I know is not going to say hi to him. He's an awful person." Ethan Berger, 13. had more practical advice: “I'd leave if I were him." Copyright 1993 Time Inc. Outrage follows cold reply to killing ; Lynda Gorov, Globe Staff; : The Boston Globe ; 08-07-1993 ; Outrage follows cold reply to killing Byline: Lynda Gorov. Globe Staff Edition: City Edition Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN Memo: FRII LOS ANGELES - Yolanda Manuel's little girl is dead, and David Cash is about to start his sophomore year in college. The muroer trial begins a week before classes. Cash is not charged with killing 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson. A young man he calls his best friend is. But Manuel says it might as well have been Cash's fist over her daughter's mouth, his hands around her neck. Cash has admitted he was in the Nevada casino restroom moments before Sherrice died. He says he saw his friend, Jeremy Strohmeyer. struggle with her in a stall. Then Cash left. Now, more than a year later, he says he never thinks of the girl, ano that his newfound notoriety has helped him meet women. Legally, Cash may be home free. Las Vegas police say he violated no state law. But his refusal to help Sherrice has triggered a campaign to make him an outcast among his college peers. "David Cash has been saying horrible things," Manuel said. He says he cries over no one. He mentions that he wants to go to school and get girls and I don't think that's the place he needs to be. He needs to be in jail. You don't do nothing when a child - a child - is getting her life taken away.“ Calling Cash an accessory to her daughter's May 1997 murder, Manuel has launcheo a petition drive demanding that some form of criminal charge be filed against him. With her blessing, two radio talk show hosts in Los Angeles are also planning to make his life miserable on campus, since it is unlikely he will be expelled for his inaction. University officials "are behind me. baby," Cash, 19, told the radio duo on KLSX-FM last week. Later in the broadcast, he added, "There is no chance I will go to jail, simply because I have done nothing wrong."

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    Sherrice's mother, as well as radio hosts Tim Conway Jr. and Doug Steckler, say otherwise. They say Cash should have stopped Strohmeyer. 20. or gone for help. Now they want him punished, if not by Nevada authorities, if not by university administrators, then by them. When Cash returns to the University of California at Berkeley this month. Conway and Steckler intend to greet him with a busload or two of picketers. They plan to distribute fliers. Their aim: to drive the aspiring nuclear engineer from class by making him a pariah. The demonstrationswill coincide with Strohmeyer's trial, slated to begin Aug. 17. Cash, who, like Strohmeyer, grew up in relative affluence in Long Beach, is expected to testify. Yolanda P.1anuel, who lives in South-Central Los Angeles, is trying to raise enough money to attend the Las Vegas trial of the man accused of sexually molesting and killing her only child "We will demonstrate at the school, at his house; we will demand justice," said Irv Rubin, who is national chairman of the Jewish Defense League and is involved in the upcoming protest as a friend of the radio duo. "You can call me a vigilante: you can call me anything you want." University officials, however, say Cash has the same right to his education as any student. After all, he faces no formal charges, since failing to report a crime or refusing to help a victim is not against the law. Spokesman Jesus Mena pointed out that Cash's class was admitted to Berkeley in March 1997. two months before the May 25 murder. "People are morally outraged that this young man probably had the opportunity to do something to save this young lady's life and they want there to be some type of remedy for their indignation," said Stewart Bell, the district attorney in Clark County, Nevada, where Strohmeyer will be tried. "But the remedy for what he did requires a response from a higher authority. That will require divine intervention." Conway and Steckler said they are more outraged by Cash's decision to leave the murder scene than by his actions and statements to the Los Angeles Times afterward. Cash admitted he did not turn in his friend when Strohmeyer became a suspect. He said he did not regret keeping quiet, and told the newspaper his connection to the case gave him a kind of cachet. "We couldn't believe that this kid. who could have prevented a death, not only decided not to do anything about it but that he's going to use it to score with chicks." said Conway, whose popular show airs weeknights. "We want everybody on campus to know exactly what kind of person he is." On the air, in a show filled with profanity, Cash said he was sorry for the Iverson family. But again he denied any feelings for Sherrice. "It’s a very tragic event. OK," Cash said on the radio. "But the simple fact remains I do not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people that die of disease in Egypt. The only person I knew in this event was Jeremy Strohmeyer and I know as his best friend that he had potential. "I'm sad," he added, "that I lost a best friend." Earlier he had told the Times he was not upset when Strohmeyer told him what he had done: later, however, Cash was furious when their high school refused to allow him to attend graduation or the prom. He showed up outside anyway, in a rented limousine. The moment, Cash standing in the sunroof, his fist raised in triumph, was captured on film. "I'm not going to getupset over somebody else's life," Cash was quoted as saying in the Times. "I'm not going to lose sleep over somebody else’s problem." Said Conway, who has received hundreds of e-mails from listeners offended by Cash's comments. "It's unbelievable that he's going to be getting his degree when he should be in prison as an accomplice to murder. . . . If we don’t do anything else, we're going to make him quit school." Cash, who testified before a grand jury, could not be reached by the Globe for comment. But he has not disputed the outline of the accusations against Strohmeyer - although, on the radio, he called them "out of character."

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