Out of the Half-Light

This episode appears to be based on the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape allegation case. In 1987, at age 15, in the small town of Wappingers Falls, New York. Tawana Brawley, a teenage African-American girl from upstate New York, was found beaten, her clothes tattered, and racial epithets written all over her body. She stated that she had been raped, though no DNA evidence was ever found. Her case received national media attention in the U.S., primarily due to Brawley's accusing six prominent white men from her town (including police officers) of gang rape. After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been the victim of a forcible sexual assault and that she herself may have created the appearance of the attack. It was eventually revealed that the whole thing had been a hoax. However, Brawley's family has maintained that the allegations were true.

EADA Stone says that the sanctuary law doesn't apply in this case because the building Congressman Eaton declared a sanctuary isn't a church. However there is no such thing as a sanctuary law that grants churches a status as a safe haven from the law, a church cannot legally shelter or protect someone that has a valid warrant for their arrest, or a warrant compelling them to appear as a witness. The only kind of sanctuary they can offer is to prevent someone from being arrested on probable cause. For example if the police are chasing a person they just witnessed commit a crime, and the suspect enters a church, the priest in charge of the church can stop the police from entering and arresting the suspect. The police must then obtain an arrest warrant, and once that warrant is obtained the church cannot prevent them from entering and arresting the suspect.