Chattanooga man to serve 15 years for torture
A Chattanooga man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for holding a woman hostage in 2017 for at least two days and torturing her repeatedly.
James Durand Favors III pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated domestic assault on July 2, 2019, the same day he was mistakenly released from Silverdale Detention Center — and remained free for six days before turning himself in again.
Since then, the sentencing hearing was delayed as the parties attempted unsuccessfully to locate a witness and then further delayed by complications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Favors’ attorney, Fisher Wise, declined to comment.
‘SHOCKING AND BARBARIC’
In the early morning hours of March 3, 2017, Chattanooga police were called to the Walgreens parking lot on Highway 153.
There, they found a 19-yearold woman with injuries so severe she was immediately taken to a hospital for treatment.
She had swollen, bruised eyes, second-degree burns on her left inner forearm, a large bite mark on her upper right back and numerous cuts, lacerations and abrasions all over her body. She also had severe third-degree burns to her genital area that required extensive treatment at an out-of-state burn center.
Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz in his sentencing order described Favors’ treatment of the victim as “torture, both cruel and sadistic.”
Leading up to that March day, prosecutors said, an argument
broke out between Favors and the woman, and “over the next several days she suffered at the hands of his violence,” prosecutors said.
At one point, the victim went to the bathroom and saw herself in a mirror.
“I had a bloody nose, busted lip and all the left side of my face was swollen,” she said during the preliminary hearing. “I had busted blood vessels in my right eye. I can’t forget how I looked. I went back in the kitchen, and that’s when he turned the burner on so that the eye would get hot.”
At the plea hearing in 2019, the prosecution made four allegations:
› Favors punched and choked her nearly to the point of unconsciousness.
› He took a hot-stove top burner and placed it on her arm.
› He heated up a butter knife and, while hot, applied it to her buttocks.
› Favors then again heated up a butter knife and placed it on her genital area, injuries Greenholtz described as so “shocking and barbaric” they are “beyond any excuse or justification.”
“What he did to me was messed up,” the woman said during one of the hearings. “What he did to me no one will ever understand. No one will be like, ‘Oh, I’m here for you, I know how that feels.’ No, you don’t. You don’t know how that feels. You don’t know how that feels. You’re not the one with the scars. You’re not the one that has to keep telling her story, that has to live with scars.”
A BALANCING ACT
When determining punishment, judges must carefully balance different factors that could affect the length of a sentence, as well as the manner in which it is served — that is, whether someone should spend time in jail, probation or some other form of sentence.
For his part, Favors argued, among other reasons, that he should get a more lenient sentence because, he claimed, his actions “were consensual and involved mutual infliction of branding,” Greenholtz noted.
Greenholtz disagreed, stating that “the horrific nature of the injuries described … are such that the conduct cannot be excused.”
Favors’ actions “amounted to the torture of the victim and a depraved and indifferent disregard for her well-being,” Greenholtz wrote.
The woman characterized the pain from her wounds as being the “worst possible pain,” Greenholtz noted, “and she testified that the pain she experienced from these wounds was ‘never-ending.’”
“[She] testified that … she could not [walk] without the assistance of a walker for some two to three weeks following,” Greenholtz added, and her treatment required months of follow-up care at the out-of-state burn unit.
“All of the injuries, but the burns, in particular, were degrading to her as a person, and as torture often does, sought to rob her of her dignity as a person.”
Greenholtz also noted Favors’ criminal history, particularly what he called an apparent pattern of “assaultive behavior against women,” adding that “the nature of the conduct has escalated in seriousness.”
In fact, Greenholtz wrote that in March 2017, Favors had been out on bail for four separate charges of assault or domestic assault that occurred during October and December 2014. In one of those cases, he tried to use a Taser on a female police officer.
Greenholtz gave Favors credit for one factor that could shorten his sentence, and that was that he voluntarily returned to custody after being mistakenly released from Silverdale.
“When the error was brought to his counsel’s attention, the defendant voluntarily surrendered, and he returned to custody,” Greenholtz wrote. “These actions show acceptance of responsibility in ways not manifested by other aspects of the case.”
Favors faced up to 20 years in prison if the sentences for each count were served consecutively, and prosecutors asked for as much.
Greenholtz agreed with the prosecution’s sentiment, noting that Favors’ “criminal conduct here was beyond callous, vicious, and cruel.” But he ultimately handed down a 15-year sentence because, he said, it is “the least severe measure necessary to achieve the purposes for which the sentence is imposed.”
Favors’ sentence is to be served in the Tennessee Department of Corrections, as “the granting of probation or split confinement could have no effect other than to promote disrespect of the law as a shield against such outrageous and abusive conduct,” Greenholtz wrote.