   
Verdict could come today in rape trial
By JOE LAMB
LOG CABIN STAFF WRITER
|
|
 (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.)
A Faulkner County jury will decide this morning the fate of a 42-year-old man accused of including his then-7-year-old daughter in sexual activity with himself and her mother. The charges were filed in December by deputy prosecuting attorney Joe Don Winningham, who led the state prosecution team Thursday in an all-day trial in which jurors heard the defendant's wife and daughter, who is now 8, testify in detail of the unspeakable acts alleged to have taken place in the bedroom of the family's Greenbrier home. The defendant's wife has pleaded guilty to permitting the abuse of a child, a class B felony, and has been sentenced to 20 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections with possibility of parole in 2012. This conviction was reached through a plea bargain arrangement in which the defendant's wife agreed to testify against her husband.
The jury also heard the testimony of two the defendant's first cousins, who wept openly on the witness stand while describing repeated episodes of rape at the hands of the defendant when they were about the same age as the defendant's daughter in question and when the defendant was in his teens and very early 20s. Both cousins told the jury that they have kept silent about the alleged abuse for 20 years, coming forward only upon hearing of the rape and sexual assault charges against the man. Both also said they were unaware that the other had suffered abuse. Defense attorney Lynn Plemmons called into question the credibility of these adult witnesses during cross-examinations that seemed to indicate discrepancies in the timeline laid out by the cousins and what he argued was an attempt at outright deception by the defendant's wife. He also provided the jury with the transcript of a November interview in which the defendant's daughter described abuse at the hands of the father and mother that he said was, in places, contradictory to the girl's testimony heard by the jury Thursday, though these claimed discrepancies were not openly discussed in the courtroom. Plemmons also told the jury that a photocopy of a cell-to-cell letter handwritten in pencil by the defendant to his wife while both were being held in Unit II of the Faulkner County Detention Center that included 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" could have been "doctored" by the defendant's wife. When called by Plemmons to testify, the defendant told the jury that the letter read "I didn't tell her much except that I didn't do it" when he sent it. The original copy of the letter, the defendant's wife said, was left at a detention facility among her other personal effects and could not be provided to the court Thursday. Speaking to the jury as to his wife's possible motivations for "doctoring" a letter to imply his guilt, the defendant said "it came to me after I was arrested that my wife had other relationships with other guys. She wanted a divorce from me ... she wanted me out of the way." Winningham responded by telling the jury that the allegations of abuse that resulted in the arrest of both the defendant and his wife began with a call to the Arkansas State Police Child Abuse Hotline from the alleged victim's school, not through an admission from the defendant's wife. If the wife's intent was to get her husband convicted and go on with her life, Winningham said, "I guess she just messed up and got herself sentenced to 20 years." "Where she'll be out in three," the defendant quickly stated, referring to his wife's possibility of parole in 2012. The defendant's father was also called by Plemmons to testify, telling the jury that the alleged rape incidents committed by his son against his two cousins could not have taken place because of a large number of people sharing bedrooms in the small homes where the crimes were alleged to have taken place and "lies" told by the two cousins about the frequency and duration of times the defendant would have been in proximity to and isolation with these alleged victims over 20 years ago. Both the defendant and his father told the jury that the two cousins, the young girl who said her father asked her to perform unspeakable acts, the defendant's wife who claimed to have witnessed and participated in these acts and a Department of Human Services case worker who told the jury that the defendant's family lived in a trailer home without running water were all "liars." In cross examination of the defendant and his father by Winningham, the father said the defendant moved out of the home where he was alleged to have raped his cousins at age 17 while the defendant said he didn't move out until he was over 20. Closing arguments were set to take place at 8:45 this morning. The jury could reach a verdict as early as this afternoon, Judge David Reynolds, who is presiding over the trial, said. (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)
User Comments:
No Comments have been posted.
|
