State v. Rodgers

202 So. 3d 1187
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedOctober 26, 2016
DocketNO. 16-KA-14
StatusPublished

This text of 202 So. 3d 1187 (State v. Rodgers) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Rodgers, 202 So. 3d 1187 (La. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

WICKER, J.

IsDefendant, Gary G. Rodgers, appeals his convictions and sentences for aggravated rape and sexual battery upon a juvenile. In his counseled brief, Defendant argues that the trial court erred in denying Defendant’s Batson challenge during jury selection, that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support the jury verdicts, and that the consecutive sentences imposed are excessive. Defendant additionally filed pro se supplemental briefs arguing that the trial court erred in failing to sequester the jury and admitting evidence of other sexual offenses. For the reasons that follow we find no merit in Defendant’s counseled or pro se assignments of error. Accordingly, we affirm Defendant’s convictions and sentences.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On March 1, 2012, a Grand Jury for Jefferson Parish returned a true bill of indictment charging Defendant with aggravated rape of a victim under the age of thirteen years, in violation of La. R.S. 14:42, and sexual battery upon a juvenile, in violation of La. R.S. 14:43.1. At his March 5, 2012 arraignment, Defendant pled not guilty. On September 18, 2013, following a finding that Defendant was competent to stand trial, Defendant withdrew his not guilty plea and entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Subsequently, a sanity commission recommended Defendant be found sane at the time of the offense.

On April 28, 2015, trial commenced before a twelve-person jury. During jury selection, defense counsel lodged several Batson objections which were denied by the trial court. On April 30, 2015, the jury found Defendant guilty on both counts. Defendant filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court heard and denied on June 8, 2015. On that same day the trial court sentenced defendant to life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence on the aggravated rape conviction and sixty years imprisonment at hard 14labor with the first twenty-five years to be served without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence on the sexual battery conviction. The trial court further ordered that Defendant serve his sentences consecutively. Defense counsel made a general oral objection to the court's sentence. On that same day the trial court granted Defendant’s motion for appeal, which he had previously filed along with his motion for new trial. Defendant’s appeal follows.

FACTS

This case arose in May of 2011 after the minor victim, “Jane,”1 reported to family members that Defendant raped her years earlier while Defendant, an extended family member, stayed at Jane’s family’s home.

At trial, Jane’s, step-grandmother, “Barbara,” testified that in late May of 2011, [1193]*1193Jane, who was ten years old at the time, and her cousin, “Kathy,” were playing together at Barbara’s home in LaPlace, Louisiana, when the two children began arguing. To determine the cause of the argument, Barbara instructed both girls to write down their problems and show them to Barbara. Jane testified that she had previously told Kathy a secret and she saw what she thought was Kathy whispering her secret to Barbara, so Jane wrote down the secret herself. On the note that Jane presented to Barbara, Jane had .written, that “Gary” had made her touch his “private” and raped her when she was at her “old house” and had told Jane not to tell “/all.” Barbara testified that Jane was very upset and crying after revealing this “secret,” and asked Barbara not to tell Jane’s parents because she wanted to wait to tell them when she was an adult.

Upon learning more details about the incident from Jane, Barbara called her son, “Robert,” Jane’s stepfather and Defendant’s paternal first cousin. Robert then contacted Jane’s mother, “Connie,” and the couple picked Jane up and brought hereto River Parish Hospital in LaPlace, where they were referred to Children’s Hospital in New Orleans.

Ann Troy, a forensic nurse practitioner qualified as an expert in child maltreatment, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, interviewed and examined Jane at the Audrey Hepburn Care Center at Children’s Hospital. Ms. Troy testified that Jane was “spontaneous and gave [her] a clear and detailed history, that Gary took her off of her top bunk bed, laid her oh the floor, made her touch his penis, and put his penis in her vagina.” Ms. Troy’s transcript of the interview with Jane indicates that Jane referred to her assailant’s penis as his “private part” and her vagina as her “pee pee.” Jane further told Ms. Troy that during the incident her younger brother was sleeping in the bottom bunk bed and her younger cousin, “Amy,” was sleeping next to her in the top bunk, and that she saw Defendant touch Amy’s “butt” soon after the night she was raped. Jane also reported to Ms. Troy that she got sad at times when her parents argued and that sometimes her father punched her mother, a claim that was controverted at trial by Jane’s parents, Connie and Robert.

Officer Bryan Wetter of the Kenner Police Department testified that, on June 22, 2011, he was called to the lobby of the police station to handle a complaint made by Jane’s family. After interviewing Jane and the other members of her family, he reported to Detective Joseph McRae that Jane had reported being anally raped by a member of her family when she was seven years old.

A video was introduced at trial of an interview conducted by Suzanne Jolissaint, a forensic interviewer at the Jefferson Children’s Advocacy Center .(hereinafter, “CAC”), on June 28, 2011. Erika Dupepe, the Director of the CAC, testified at trial that Ms. Jolissaint lived in Connecticut at the time of tidal but that all of the CAC’s procedures were followed in conducting the interview. During the interview, which was being monitored simultaneously from a separate, room by Detective McRae, Jane told the interviewer that one night when she lived at her old I Bhouse in Kenner she was in the top bunk bed in her bedroom, while her cousin Amy slept next to her and her brother slept below, when Defendant entered the room. Jane told the interviewer that Defendant took her off of her bunk bed and made- her touch his “private.” Jane then told the interviewer that she was lying on-the floor on her side, with Defendant in the same position behind her, when he “humped her,” explaining that his “private ... went back and then he went forward ... real real hard between [her] butt.” Afterwards, Jane told the interview[1194]*1194er that her “butt” was wet and that it “hurted.” Throughout much of the interview, Jane spoke quietly and seemed to cry.

During her testimony, Jane, who was fourteen at the time of trial, testified that when she was seven years old and living with her family in a two-bedroom home in Kenner, Louisiana, she and her brother shared a room with bunk beds. During that time her father’s cousin, Defendant, stayed at the family’s home on the sofa. Jane testified that one night, when she and her brother, but not Amy, were in their bedroom, Defendant came into the bedroom, picked her up from the top bunk bed, grabbed her hand and made her touch his “private part” “underneath the clothes.” Jane testified that Defendant also “put his private part in [her] butt,” and that it felt wet and slimy. After Defendant stopped, he put Jane back in her bed, told her to go to sleep and not to tell anyone what had happened. Jane also testified that on a different night she saw Defendant touch Amy’s “butt.”

When questioned at trial as to why Jane had reported that Defendant penetrated her vagina to Ms.

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Bluebook (online)
202 So. 3d 1187, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-rodgers-lactapp-2016.