← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gabrielle
Thread ID: 19713 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-08-18
2005-08-18 12:20 | User Profile
Man who raped 2 gets life sentences Both victims, ages 9 and 10, were taken from their beds at night in Fort Pierce. By Sarah Prohaska
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
FORT PIERCE — Both girls kissed their mothers good night and crawled into bed at their normal bedtimes, between 9 and 10 p.m.
For one of the girls, it was a Saturday night, and she remembers watching the Disney Channel before going to sleep. The other expected to get up the next morning and go to school.
Instead, on those two separate nights in September and October 2003, each girl awoke in the middle of the night to a strange man hovering over her bed.
A jury decided that the man, Frederick Lamar Mitchell, repeated a similar attack: He broke into their Fort Pierce homes, carried the girls outside and violently raped them. One prosecutor called the attacks two of "the most brutal crimes committed in this community in quite some time."
On Monday, Circuit Judge James McCann ordered Mitchell, 34, to spend the rest of his life in prison for the burglary, kidnapping and rapes of the two girls, who were 9 and 10 at the time. He also will be evaluated to determine whether he is an appropriate candidate for chemical castration.
If doctors approve, Mitchell will undergo the treatment, which state law allows for defendants twice convicted of rape.
"What you did to these pure and innocent young girls was unthinkable," McCann told Mitchell. "It was filthy, it was perverted and it was disgusting."
A jury in July convicted Mitchell of seven charges: two counts of sexual battery, two counts of aggravated kidnapping and three counts of burglary. McCann sentenced Mitchell to life on each charge, and he specified that the life sentences for the two sexual batteries be served back-to-back.
Assistant State Attorney Kathy Nelson asked for those two sentences to run consecutively so each of the girls' families can "feel some type of justice."
Mitchell's crimes, she said, not only traumatized the families, but kept the entire Fort Pierce community on edge from September to December 2003. Parents kept their children inside after dark, and double-checked to make sure their doors and windows were locked.
"He terrorized a whole community," Nelson said.
During the hearing, Mitchell spoke briefly.
"I felt like going to trial — it wasn't right," Mitchell said.
When McCann asked what wasn't right, Mitchell responded: "The way the trial went."
After the sentencing, his attorney, Jeff Smith, declined to comment or elaborate.
Inside the courtroom, while McCann read off the multiple life sentences, the younger of the two girls quietly hugged her mother. Afterward, the girl, now 11, said she was relieved.
"We're happy it's over," her mother said. "Now she can go on with her life."
McCann called Mitchell's crimes "unforgivable" and pointed out that the older of the two girls, who will be 12 next month, could not recall details of the attack.
"Her memory of this event remains in the deepest recesses of her subconscious mind for the time being," McCann said. "But one day she'll have to deal with the ugly reality of what you've done to her."
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