Jury convicts in statutory rape of 6-year-old girl

By Staff
August 14, 2004
By Suzanne Monk/managing editor
Jurors made short work Friday of a defendant who admitted getting into sexual situations with a 6-year-old victim but, amazingly, claimed it was her fault because she supposedly came on to him.
Cottrell Carter Jr., 35, stood trial this week in Lauderdale County Circuit Court. The indictment against him charged two sex crimes, both of which were alleged to have occurred in February 2003: statutory rape and sexual battery.
Carter made a handwritten statement to Investigator Kenneth Graham of the sheriff's department before his arrest in August 2003. In it, Carter admitted to two sexual encounters with the little girl. His statement reads in part:
Carter was careful in his written statement, however, to assert three points: He had a sexual climax both times, but he didn't penetrate her. He didn't force her. He didn't hurt her.
The jury convicted him in under an hour.
Suppression hearing
Carter did not testify in his own defense and the biggest block of time during his two-day trial came as his attorney, David Stephenson, sought to suppress the earlier written statement.
During a three-hour suppression hearing conducted outside the presence of the jury, Carter claimed that deputies coerced his statement.
Assistant District Attorney Dan Angero asked him how. Carter said deputies: 1) claimed his DNA had been matched to semen found inside the girl's vagina; 2) threatened him with violence; 3) promised him one year in prison if he would admit his guilt; and 4) threatened him with a 30-year prison sentence if he didn't.
Angero said the defendant, who referred frequently to notes during the hearing, had clearly spent time researching cases in the law library at the jail.
Carter said his handwritten statement was full of lies. Angero took him through it paragraph by paragraph, asking to him to identify the untrue parts and then attacking Carter's responses.
Angero's conclusion: At the time he made the statement, Carter thought painting himself as a passive recipient of the little girl's supposed sexual appetite would exonerate him.
Circuit Judge Robert Bailey agreed, admitting the statement into evidence and allowing the jury to read it.
The jury's choice
There was still one big hurdle for the prosecution confessing to what?
On both counts of the indictment, Judge Bailey allowed the jury to consider the lesser-included charge of fondling. Read in its least-damning light, Carter's written statement was an admission of fondling.
But, Carter claimed he didn't put his penis or anything else in the little girl, and both statutory rape and sexual battery require some degree of penetration.
In both his opening and closing statements, defense attorney David Stephenson said prosecutors could not prove penetration. He also attacked their failure to provide medical testimony about the girl's condition.
Assistant District Attorney Vel Young urged jurors to believe the testimony of the victim, now 7 years old and starting the second grade. She testified that she tried to tell Carter "no," but he took her clothes off and placed her where he wanted her.
Angero told jurors their choice came down to this: "Is it the greater crime that the child testified to, or the lesser crime that the defendant testified to?"
The jury believed the victim and found Carter guilty of both statutory rape and sexual battery. Judge Bailey set a sentencing hearing for Sept. 24. Carter could receive a life sentence.