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| Inmate Convicted of Rape, Molestation |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 02/24/2003 |
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A New York prison inmate whose DNA matched samples from three unsolved crime scenes was convicted February 13 of raping a 10-year-old girl and a 67-year-old woman and molesting a 4-year-old girl he abducted during a burglary. A jury deliberated for five hours before finding Robert Griffin guilty of 16 counts of rape, sodomy, burglary, kidnapping and related charges. Griffin, 30, was identified when DNA evidence from crime scenes was matched to his semen sample in New York State's DNA database. The odds of the DNA belonging to anyone else were as high as a quadrillion to one, prosecutor Larry Bernstein said. ''You need not search any further,'' Bernstein told jurors during closing arguments Thursday morning. ''The person who committed the crimes in this case is sitting right there.'' But defense attorney James Stevenson maintained Griffin was a victim of coincidence and a police conspiracy. Statements Griffin allegedly made to police were read in court in January during a hearing in which a judge determined they were legally obtained and could be used at his trial, which opened Feb. 3. Griffin could get up to 50 years in prison at sentencing on March 7. Asked in court last month if he'd rejected a plea offer of 38 years in prison, he replied, ''That is very correct.'' Griffin is already serving a five-year sentence at Cayuga prison in Moravia in central New York for an unrelated burglary. |
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