Two weeks after Rosha Banks was released from prison in 2019, prosecutors accused him of restraining and sexually assaulting a transgender woman in a Boystown gangway. Last month, according to court records, he reached a plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in a six-year prison sentence on a reduced charge.
After receiving the state’s standard 50% sentence reduction and credit for the time he spent in jail before going to prison, Banks walked out of the Stateville Correctional Center on July 19, three days after he arrived.
On the afternoon of July 15, 2019, Banks choked the 24-year-old woman and forced her to perform sex acts in the 3600 block of North Halsted, prosecutors said at the time.
After the attack, while “pushing her from one place to another against her will” in the neighborhood, Banks threatened to kill the woman if she left, charging documents said. She told police she escaped after Banks boarded a Red Line train at Addison after midnight the next day.
Police arrested Banks two days later after he allegedly hid inside a business’ bathroom stall with a knife in the 3600 block of North Halsted. He had been released from prison two weeks earlier after serving half of a three-year robbery sentence.
A grand jury returned more than 20 counts against Banks, including kidnapping and sexual assault, according to court records. But, in the end, he reached a deal with prosecutors: Banks pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of Class 2 kidnapping, which was reduced from Class X aggravated kidnapping causing bodily harm, and prosecutors dropped the remaining counts.
Banks had been in custody since the day he was arrested, accumulating over 1,000 days of credit toward the six-year sentence imposed by Judge Domenica Stephenson. He will be on parole until next July.
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