Toledo man convicted in 1993 rape of girl, 10
Jury in 2-day trial deliberates 30 minutes
Toledo Blade -
BY ERICA BLAKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
It had been nearly 18 years since a man attacked and raped a 10-year-old girl as she rode her bike in a wooded area in Sylvania Township during the summer of 1993 on her way to a friend's ball game.
Tuesday, after a two-day trial and about 30 minutes of jury deliberations, someone was finally held accountable for the crime.
Bradley Roberts, 45, of Toledo was found guilty by a Lucas County Common Pleas Court jury of one count each of rape, kidnapping, and gross sexual imposition. Because the victim was under the age of 13 at the time of the assault, Roberts faces life in prison when sentenced June 10 by Judge James Jensen.
"Some people say justice delayed is justice denied but in this case, the justice was delayed but it was not denied," said Jeff Lingo, chief of the criminal division of the prosecutor's office and a prosecutor on the case. "The jury listened very carefully to the evidence and now, almost 18 years later, [the victim] can sleep well at night."
The jury of 10 women and two men heard evidence from nine witnesses over two days, including testimony from the victim, now 28. They also saw aerial photos of the wooded area, just yards away from Hill View Elementary and Arbor Hills Junior High School, where the July 9, 1993, assault occurred.
Wiping away tears and struggling to keep her body from shaking, the victim recounted how she was riding her bike, the first time she had been given permission to go somewhere alone, to the fields about a mile away from her house when she was attacked and raped by a man who covered her face and threatened her not to tell.
She was only 10 years old at the time.
"I was scared to death," she testified Monday. "I just didn't want him to kill me."
The victim, who was in court with family and friends to hear the verdict, declined to comment. The Blade does not identify victims of sexual assault.
At the time of the assault, the victim gave a description of her assailant and evidence was collected during a medical exam, but investigators could not develop any suspects. The case went cold.
Sylvania Township police Detective Tina Seney testified Tuesday that with the advances in DNA, the department sent the "rape kit" assembled by a nurse during the exam of the victim to a state laboratory for analysis. It was then determined that the swabs showed DNA from both the victim and an unknown male. Sylvania Township police reopened the case in 2010 while reviewing evidence in the property room.
"In the course of our investigation, Bradley Roberts became a possible suspect," she said. Police then executed a search warrant for Roberts' DNA, which was sent to the state lab for comparison.
An analyst from the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation testified Tuesday that when compared, Roberts' DNA was found to be "consistent" with the DNA found on the victim. More specifically, analyst Cassandra Agosti testified that the likelihood of anyone else having this profile is one in 1.197 billion or nearly 10 times the male population in the United States.
During closing arguments, Roberts' lawyer, John Thebes, noted that despite several witnesses, "most of [the state's] case has not even mentioned Bradley Roberts. He asked jurors to focus on the fact that although 10 of the 15 locations tested during DNA analysis were consistent with Roberts, there were five points on a DNA strand that were too deteriorated to gather information.
He described the case as a "statistical prosecution" that was "heavy on numbers, light on evidence."
Mr. Thebes declined to comment after the verdict.
Mr. Lingo countered the defense argument by asking the jury to consider how "huge" a number the statistical likelihood is. He then questioned who would take lottery odds if the payout was one in 1.197 billion.
"Just because he was not arrested at the time doesn't mean that we won't catch them," he said after the verdict. "If we can prosecute a case and we have the evidence, we are going to go forward."
http://www.toledoblade.com/Courts/2011/0...rl-10.html
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