After his release from prison, Republican was charged with sexual assault

Less than a month after serving a 22-year sentence for second-degree murder, a Republican man is back behind bars, accused of sexually assaulting a woman.

Christopher Davis Harrison, 41, is in the Greene County Jail charged with second-degree sodomy and second-degree sexual assault for an incident that allegedly occurred on Monday, May 6, 2024.

According to court documents, Harrison was released from a Missouri Department of Corrections prison on April 11, 2024. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison for second-degree murder and armed criminal action in Jackson County.

Harrison served approximately 22 years of that sentence and was paroled.

Harrison allegedly told the victim that “no” doesn’t always mean “no.”

According to the probable cause statement filed by an officer with the Republic Police Department, the alleged victim said she met Harrison on the morning of May 6 while they were both walking their dogs.

Shortly after that first conversation, Harrison knocked on her door and asked to come to her apartment and talk to her. The woman let him in; They chatted and exchanged phone numbers.

The woman told the officer that Harrison asked her some intimate questions and then began kissing her. She said she didn’t return the kiss for more than three or four seconds, the officer wrote, and then she tried to pull away by telling him “no” and that she was in a committed relationship.

According to the probable cause statement, the woman said she repeatedly told Harrison “no” as he lifted up her shirt and bra, kissed one of her breasts, tried to pull down her pants, pull down his shorts, expose his penis and forcibly put her inside Hand on his penis.

The woman said Harrison eventually left after she told him she received a text message from her fiancé.

The next day, in a recorded phone call with Harrison, the woman asked Harrison why he continued “doing what he did when I kept saying ‘no.’

According to the probable cause affidavit, Harrison stated that “when a woman says ‘no,’ in her mind that can mean that he doesn’t find me as beautiful as I really am…”

Officer: Harrison made another woman feel like a victim

In the probable cause statement, the investigating officer wrote that Harrison married in prison and that his wife said they had been married for at least a decade.

Another single woman who lived in the same building as the alleged victim in the May 6 incident told the officer about something that happened to her on April 23, 2024. That woman said she was helping Harrison find a workout room code for the apartment complex. She said it was the first time she had met Harrison and that he was at her apartment. She said she gave him a code to the training room and he allegedly hugged her from the front and kissed her on the cheek.

“She was so upset about this that she sent a text message to (Harrison’s) wife that it made her ‘pissed off’ because she didn’t even know him,” the officer wrote. “In less than a month after spending over 20 years in prison, Christopher had at least two incidents in which he was in the homes of single women and made them both feel like victims, one of which was aggravated sexual assault by VICTIM 1.”

According to the probable cause statement, Harrison told the officer who took him to jail that he belonged to a gang.

“I have reasonable grounds to believe that Christopher poses a danger to the victim and the community in which he lives,” the investigating officer wrote, “due to the criminal incompetence that Christopher exhibited within a month of his release from prison has demonstrated.”

According to online court records, Harrison does not yet have an attorney. He is scheduled to appear in court on May 16.

Harrison is being held in jail without bail.

Jackie Rehwald

Jackie Rehwald is a reporter at the Springfield Daily Citizen. She addresses public safety, the courts, homelessness, domestic violence and other social issues. Their office number is 417-837-3659. More from Jackie Rehwald