Tuesday, May 10, 2005
DISTRICT ATTORNEY BROWN URGES STATE LEGISLATURE TO ABOLISH 10-YEAR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR FELONY SEXUAL ASSAULTS FOLLOWING CONVICTION BY QUEENS JURY OF DEFENDANT FOR 1993 SODOMY OF NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN DNA “COLD HIT” PROSECUTION
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown today urged State legislators to amend New York’s Penal Law to end the existing 10-year statute of limitations in sexual assault cases, arguing that DNA evidence now makes it scientifically possible to apprehend and prosecute defendants no matter how much time passes.
The District Attorney called for a change in the law following the conviction on all counts yesterday by a Queens County jury of a defendant for the 1993 sexual attack of a nine-year-old girl. The prosecution was the result of a match between the defendant’s DNA and DNA recovered from the victim’s rape kit. The match resulted after the defendant’s DNA profile was entered into the national DNA database in May 2003 following his convictions for burglary in Maryland.
District Attorney Brown said, “It is time to bring the law in step with science. DNA does not forget or make mistakes. It is a signature for life that is unaffected by the passage of time –- in this case over 12 years. Not to amend old laws is to let rapists and pedophiles, whose identities DNA now reveals, escape prosecution and walk free.”
District Attorney Brown joined Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau who last week urged the Legislature to amend the law and end the existing statute of limitations for sex crimes as the result of DNA linking a man pending trial for rape in Manhattan to a pattern of sexual assaults in Maryland and New Jersey.
District Attorney Brown identified the defendant convicted in Queens yesterday as Michael Jerome Brown, 44, a convicted felon incarcerated in Maryland. A Queens jury found him guilty of Sodomy in the First Degree, Kidnapping in the Second Degree, Assault in the Second Degree and Endangering the Welfare of a Child. A jury of eight women and four men took less than an hour after a week-long trial to return its verdict before Supreme Court Justice Sheri Roman. The defendant will be sentenced on June 1, 2005 and faces up to 25 years in prison.
The District Attorney said that according to the trial testimony from the now 21-year old victim, her sister, and her aunt who raised them, as well as from police, hospital and DNA lab personnel, the attack took place on August 16, 1993. The victim was walking to a friend’s apartment in the Queensbridge Houses at 41-07 10th Street in Long Island City when she was grabbed from behind and dragged to the roof of the building. The defendant beat her in the head with a brick, stomped on her face, causing her to lose consciousness, and sexually attacked her. The victim regained consciousness and clad only in a blood-soaked t-shirt staggered to her friend’s apartment. There were no leads, and the defendant remained at large.
District Attorney Brown said that in 2003 in an initiative to solve “cold” cases using newly available DNA technology, evidence collected by the hospital from the victim was analyzed and matched through DNA databanks to the defendant incarcerated in Maryland for a string of burglaries. The defendant was indicted by a Queens County Grand Jury only six weeks before the statute of limitations was due to run out.
District Attorney Brown urged lawmakers to recognize the power of DNA evidence as a crime fighting tool, declaring, “Science has now given us the tools to see in sexual assault cases that justice delayed is no longer justice denied. Sex crime victims suffer a lifetime of trauma and deserve our best efforts to achieve justice for them.”
According to the District Attorney, currently, the statute of limitations in rape cases is only 10 years, if the rapist’s identity or whereabouts are unknown. But after 10 years, if the rapist’s identity becomes known through matches using the state and national DNA databanks, the District Attorney is barred under current law from prosecuting the defendant. To date, this has meant that prosecutors have been barred from acting on DNA-based leads potentially involving 50 serial rapists.
District Attorney Brown said, “A law that may have made sense in the last century is today allowing serial rapists and pedophiles to remain at large. The laws must change to keep pace with crime fighting technology.”
The District Attorney said that Queens County has had great success in prosecuting rapes and sexual assaults against women and children using DNA evidence. The DNA Prosecutions Unit of his Special Victims Bureau has already convicted nearly three dozen men for various sex crimes, including 12 who were serial rapists.
District Attorney Brown said, “My office has devoted substantial resources to the prosecution of these heinous, life-altering crimes. The time has come to enact a law that permits District Attorneys to prosecute rapists and pedophiles no matter when they preyed upon their innocent and helpless victims.”
Assistant District Attorney Eric C. Rosenbaum, DNA Prosecutions Unit Chief, is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Majory D. Fisher, Bureau Chief, 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.