BATON ROUGE - In April 2024, East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore was candid with WBRZ about one of the worst allegations of domestic violence he had ever seen.

"I've been around 50 years and when I read this one, I was extremely shaken on this one. It was completely different than many others I've seen before," Moore said. 

According to an affidavit, Jacob Woods had reportedly become enraged by text messages he read on a woman's phone.
He took her keys. He choked her until she lost consciousness. Then he repeatedly sexually assaulted her with a blow torch, which he ignited. He also tried to pull her teeth out with pliers.

Woods was charged with rape, sexual battery and kidnapping, but eight months later, ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge of battery of a dating partner.

According to the amended indictment, there was a lack of evidence and his alleged victim did not want to cooperate.

As a survivor of domestic violence, the hesitation to proceed with a case is a feeling Angela Gabriel knows intimately.

"I remember going into the bathroom. I remember stepping into the tub. My next memory is him standing in the bathroom door and I see the last two gunshots," she said. 

In 2017, Gabriel was shot nine times by her ex, a Baton Rouge firefighter. She's now permanently paralyzed but uses her harrowing experience to educate and inspire other women.

"I chose to live. I chose to come out and advocate for women who are maybe going through what I went through and just wanted to know, 'How do I get through?"

She says even after what he did to her, there were moments after his arrest that she asked for leniency.

"In my case, he was charged with attempted second-degree murder, which carried up to 50 years and I thought, you know, maybe we can do attempted manslaughter because that will give him an opportunity to do his time, but still be a of a good age where he can have a relationship with his kids."

Assistant District Attorney Melanie Fields says Gabriel's thought process is common among victims and the vast majority hesitate to proceed with their cases.

"Probably over 90 percent of them file what we call a 'Drop charge request,'" Fields said.  "Almost every single domestic and dating violence victim does not want to participate in prosecution at one point or another during the whole experience, we know that. So that's why the ultimate goal is to try and prosecute without them at all."

In order to do that, Fields says they lean heavily on the officers or deputies who are first on the scene at a domestic violence call.

"Law enforcement are meticulous when they prosecute a homicide scene. We need them to do the same for domestic and dating violence. If they do that same kind of collection, that same kind of observation, that same kind of report writing for domestic and dating violence calls, we can prosecute them all without a victim."

It's a large part of their "Stop the Loss" program that began in 2017.

"From 2016, domestic and dating violence deaths just rise. We went from like 16 to 20 something to 36 and we wanted to stop the loss of life."

The unique program works to identify and intervene in domestic violence as early as possible.

"We have a law enforcement team that meets every two weeks to discuss the most serious cases, and, for them, it's 'Do we need follow up to these cases so we can prosecute more effectively often without a victim?'"

Though the program is relatively new, Fields and District Attorney Hillar Moore credit it with slowing down domestic violence deaths.

According to data from Stop the Loss, domestic violence-related arrests increased nearly 50 percent from 2023 to 2024.

In 2024, domestic violence deaths were down 72 percent from their all-time high in 2021. What those statistics don't say is how many of those arrests result in appropriate prison time.

According to defense attorney Ron Haley, in his experience, a lot of the domestic violence-related charges his clients are originally booked for end up getting pleaded down.

"Most of the time when you talk about pleading down DV cases, there are significant mitigation that is done. This person has taken classes, this person has sought mental health treatment, if substance abuse is a part of it, this person has gotten evaluation, followed treatment before these things are allowed to plead down," Haley said. 

This is usually the case when the victim wants to drop the charges.

"I understand why some women do that, because he could be the breadwinner. He could be the one who takes care of all the bills in the house and if she puts him in jail, who's going to take care of the household?" Gabriel said. 

But even when the victim is hesitant about proceeding, that doesn't mean the case will be dropped or pleaded down.

"In my experience with this DA's office, it's not enough just to drop the charges. If somebody goes and files a drop charges request, it doesn't mean it will be dropped immediately. There is due diligence that is done by the DA's office," Haley said.

In the 19th JDC, Fields and her team will try to prosecute without the victim, unless they determine pushing forward could bring more harm than good—particularly in misdemeanor cases.

"You will find more cases dismissed in the misdemeanor realm than in the felony realm and that may be because a prosecutor has looked at it and realized that harm may happen if they go forward," Fields said. "Misdemeanors only carry six months max and it's never going to be a real six months in Parish Prison. That is not enough time for a victim of abuse to become psychologically healthy and independent, so whoever the abuser is, when they get out, there's going to be more abuse."

Often, Fields says in cases like this, they won't just let the suspect off entirely.

"Sometimes we will prosecute a drug case or a theft case or something else instead of the DV case just to have some court intervention."

Even with all of this in place, sometimes there still isn't enough to proceed with prosecution, like in the case against Jacob Woods. In the end, he was given six months and credit for time served.

Gabriel now uses her experience to try and help victims find their strength.

"I didn't know I needed advocating. I thought I had it together. I thought, 'Oh, you know he snapped. He's not a bad person. Let's give him less time'," she said. "We need those people around us to help think for us and move us through the process and that's what our DA's Office did and that's what my family did for me."

Carl Thompson, the man who shot Gabriel, was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 45 years.