Wednesday, February 16, 2005
D.A. BROWN: DNA EVIDENCE RESULTS IN GUILTY PLEA BY JAMAICA RESIDENT FOR 1999 SODOMY OF 23-YEAR-OLD WOMAN; FACES 19 YEARS IN PRISON
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that an inmate imprisoned on a previous burglary has pled guilty for the sexual attack and robbery on a 23-year-old woman in Jamaica, Queens in 1999 inside the victim’s residence.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant’s guilty plea was a direct result of an ongoing initiative in which convicted felony offenders are required to submit their DNA to a statewide DNA databank. This plea ensures the certainty of a conviction and helps protect other women from possible attacks. I hope that the victim receives a measure of solace knowing that her attacker has now been apprehended, convicted and faces a long prison sentence.”
District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as William Rowe, 33, of 89-15 144th Street in Jamaica, Queens. The defendant pled guilty yesterday to Sodomy, Robbery and Burglary in the First Degree, Unlawful Imprisonment in the Second Degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child before Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael D. Aloise who indicated that he would sentence the defendant to a determinate sentence of 19 years in prison on March 22, 2005.
District Attorney Brown said that according to the charges on February 20, 1999 at about 9:30 a.m. the defendant broke into the victim’s home located on 150th Street in Jamaica, Queens. The defendant sodomized the victim in her bathroom and then robbed her and her 17-year-old niece at gunpoint, taking jewelry and over $200, and then fled with the victim’s bicycle. The victim’s children, a one-year-old girl and a four-year-old girl, also witnessed the attack.
The defendant was incarcerated after pleading guilty to a 1998 burglary. He was sentenced to serve seven years in prison and required to provide his DNA. A match was later made between the defendant’s DNA and a DNA sample recovered from the victim’s sweatpants and the defendant was rearrested and charged.
Assistant District Attorney John D. Carroll of District Attorney Brown's Special Victims Bureau is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Marjory D. Fisher, Bureau Chief, and Kenneth M. Appelbaum and Lucinda C. Suarez, Deputy Chiefs, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Charles A. Testagrossa and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.