(Editor's note: The defendant and others in this story are not identified. The Log Cabin Democrat has a policy of protecting the identities of victims of sexual crimes, so names have been omitted.)
ALife without parole was the sentence issued by Circuit Judge David Reynolds Friday at the end of a two-day trial of a man now found guilty of raping his 7-year-old daughter.
The defendant accused of bringing the girl into the bedroom of his Greenbrier home to watch he and his wife have sex before compelling the girl to perform sexual acts showed little emotion as the verdict was read.
The Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA) advocate assigned to the young victim wept openly at the end of a tense trial that included graphic and disturbing testimonies from three of the defendant's alleged victims and the mother of his daughter.
Perhaps more convincing than the testimony of the defendant's daughter, deputy prosecuting attorney Joe Don Winningham said after the trial, was the testimony of two sisters, the defendant's first cousins, who voluntarily made contact with the Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney's office to offer testimony of repeated episodes of rape at the hands of the defendant.
Both women said they had kept silent for 20 years, only coming forward after hearing the defendant had been accused of raping his daughter, who was almost exactly the same age they were when the defendant, who was in his teens and very early 20s, began raping them. One said the abuse stopped as she reached puberty.
The older sister sobbed uncontrollably as she told the jury that until both decided to come forward, neither knew about the other's abuse.
"I never ever though she knew, never ever. I was supposed to protect her," she said, also saying she was compelled to travel hundreds of miles to recount the story and face her painful memories "because what he did was wrong and what he did to my sister was wrong and what he did to his child is wrong and he needs to stand up and admit it and be taken off the street."
The woman also told the jury that when she learned her family was considering allowing the defendant to spend a summer in their home and watch her and her sisters, she became paralyzed from the waist down for several days for reasons doctors said were psychological.
The younger of the two sisters told the jury she felt great guilt for never coming forward, even after she knew that the defendant was living in a home with a young daughter.
"Because I never came forward and my sister never came forward I have always felt like this is something ... that I created him as a monster because I never tried to stop it.
"I hope (the defendant) will never touch another child again," she also said.
Testimony from the defendant's wife, who pleaded guilty to permitting child abuse as part of a plea bargain agreement that included her agreement to testify against her husband, unsettled most in the courtroom. Several jurors were visibly shaken as she described with an even voice and in crude pornographic detail her complacent participation in the acts that lead to her daughter's rape.
She is serving the maximum allowable sentence of 20 years imprisonment. She will be eligible for parole in 2012.
Public defender Lynn Plemmons called into question the credibility of this witness and her testimony, saying that she "doctored" a letter to fraudulently incriminate her husband. The prosecution produced a photocopy of a cell-to-cell letter from the defendant to his wife after their arrest containing the sentences "I found out we can write each other cell-to-cell so what did you tell that cop the day I got arrested? I didn't tell her much except that I did do it"
Plemmons argued that given "a space" between the words "did" and "do it," the syntax and content of the sentence and the facts that the letter was written in pencil, the only writing utensil provided to inmates, and that the original from which the photocopy was made could not be provided to the court, it was obvious that the letter likely originally read "I didn't tell her much except that I didn't do it."
The defendant's wife, he told the jury, fabricated the episode in her and her husband's bedroom after their arrest and "doctored" the letter to falsely incriminate her husband because she "cut a deal" to avoid longer sentence and to have the possibility of parole. He also said "she has plans for the rest of her life" that he indicated may have involved a romantic relationship with a "pen pal" with whom she had exchanged dozens of letters while in custody.
He also told the jury during his closing statements that he had no doubt that the young victim had been sexually abused, but said that the abuse likely occurred at the hands of one of her mother's lovers who visited the home while her father, an over-the-road truck driver, was away for long periods of time.
During the trial Plemmons told the jury several times of an unknown adult's pubic hair recovered from the victim's underpants during a sexual abuse examination at Arkansas Children's Hospital. The hair was proven not to have come from the body of either parent or anyone else living in the household.
The defendant and his father both told the jury that both cousins and the defendant's wife and daughter were lying.
"Remember what (the younger of the defendant's two cousins) said in her testimony," Winningham told the jury. "She called (the defendant) a monster. That's what he is."
Winningham told the jury that they had either witnessed "one of those moments of time where all these coincidences come together, where all the state's witnesses have lied and he's the only one telling the truth," or that they must arrive at a verdict of guilt.
The jury deliberated for more than three hours before returning with the verdict.
"They talk about prison as a place for rehabilitation and punishment, but some people just don't deserve to be in society," Winningham told the jury before they went into deliberation to sentence the defendant. "He is a guilty man. We ask that you sentence him to life in prison."
The jury could not, however, arrive at a unanimous agreement as to the defendant's sentence. Given the charge, the minimum sentence was 10 years, the maximum was 40 years or life. When the jury returned to tell the judge that no agreement could be reached, the jury foreman told the court that some jurors "won't budge." The burden then passed to Reynolds with the agreement of both prosecution and defense. Reynolds did not hesitate in announcing the maximum sentence, life without parole.
When asked if he would use his last opportunity to address the court, the now-handcuffed defendant said "yeah, I'm innocent."
Plemmons requested immediate transfer to another holding facility due to several threats against the defendant from other inmates at Unit II of the Faulkner County Detention Center.
Winningham said Plemmons deserved credit for the skill with which he did his court-appointed job of defending his client, saying that he and Plemmons "square off pretty often and he always presents a good defense."
As deputy prosecuting attorney Chuck Clawson left the courthouse he received a round of applause from a small group of child advocates working for several agencies involved in the case.
"Cases involving crimes against children are the worst," Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney Marcus Vaden said after the sentence was issued, adding that crimes in which a child is sexually abused by both their mother and father are surely the worst of the worst.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
