A federal judge granted a request by the U.S. Attorney’s Office this week to dismiss charges against three men who were arrested in 2023 and charged locally with raping a 13-year-old girl, less than two weeks after federal charges were filed.
According to documents filed in the V.I. Superior Court and the U.S. District Court, the girl told a V.I. Police Department detective in December 2022 that she was contacted by Ajani Nicholas through the popular messaging app Snapchat. Over the next few months, Nicholas, a man named Sincere Williams, and a man later identified as Nicholas’s brother, Kevin, picked the girl up from her house several times and drove her to various other locations to have sex. All were older than 18 at the time, according to court records.
A V.I. Superior Court judge signed an arrest warrant for the three men in April 2023. All three were arrested and charged with second-degree aggravated rape, second-degree unlawful sexual contact, and child abuse. Ajani Nicholas was further charged with possessing a visual medium depicting sexually explicit content because he filmed one of the encounters on his phone.
Superior Court records show that all three agreed to participate in a pretrial intervention program before the local charges were dismissed with prejudice in late 2024 and early 2025.
Earlier this month, a set of 15 federal charges, including coercion and enticement of a minor, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in sexual activity, and aggravated second-degree rape, were filed in U.S. District Court. Just before all three defendants made their initial appearance at the federal courthouse Monday on St. Croix, the government moved to dismiss the case after determining “that dismissal is in the best interest of justice,” according to a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Attorney Adam Sleeper.
Senior District Judge Wilma Lewis granted the motion for dismissal Tuesday.
