LITTLE ROCK — A convicted sex offender who had claimed that his accuser, a 12-year-old honor-roll student, was really a prostitute who posed as an adult, was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for abducting and raping the girl.
A Pulaski County jury of seven men and five women took about 40 minutes to convict 44-year-old Vincent Kevin Webb of rape and kidnapping, then deliberated about 77 minutes on a sentencing recommendation, which was imposed by Circuit Judge Herb Wright after a one-day trial.
Webb, who during his 31 minutes on the stand acknowledged having a 1996 Tennessee conviction for attempted rape, testified that the girl in the Pulaski County case approached him. He said she was likely attracted by his distinctive black Cadillac, which had four TV screens and “lots of sound.” She asked for a ride, then offered him sex for cash, Webbtestified, saying that the girl told him she was 18.
“She said she was trying to make some money,” Webb told jurors. “She was trying to sell me some sex.”
Webb said he didn’t have intercourse with her because after she undressed he got concerned about her hygiene, but he said he pleasured himself while watching her use one of his sex toys. Since they didn’t have intercourse, Webb told jurors, he didn’t pay her the $60 she’d asked for, butgave her $20 and dropped her off at a friend’s home as she had asked.
He argued with deputy prosecutor Hayden Shurgar and accused authorities of deliberately trying to play down the girl’s looks and of paying witnesses to testify against him. Webb argued with Shurgar so much that the judge halted the proceedings and told him to answer Shurgar’s questions or face the possibility that his testimony would be stricken from the record.
The seventh-grade girl, now 13, testified that she’d never seen Webb before when he pulled her into his Cadillac about 7 p.m. Aug. 7 in the parking lot of the Colonial Parc at Baseline apartments at 5813 Base Line Road where she’d been visiting friends. Webb drove her to his Geyer Springs Road apartment where he forced her to undress at gunpoint before abusing her with a sex toy and then raping her,she said.
“I said ‘it hurts,’ and he said ‘it’s supposed to,’” the girl told jurors.
Her abductor then dropped her off at an old nightclub on Colonel Glenn Road where she was able to make her way to a friend’s house nearby. The man gave her $20 and a piece of paper with his cell phone number, she told jurors. She said she was humiliated when Webb gave her the money, “like I was tricking myself.”
But Webb left something more, prosecutors said: his DNA on her underwear. Webb was on probation at the time for convictions in Pulaski County for failure to registeras a sex offender and for selling drugs.
The girl was able to give police such a detailed description of Webb, his car and home that police arrested him within three hours of her arrival at the hospital, where doctors determined that she’d suffered painful injuries. Doctors were also able to determine that she’d recently had sex, but they couldn’t conclusively match genetic material collected from a physical exam to Webb.
In Tuesday’s trial, both sides agreed that a conviction hinged on whom jurors believed. To acquit Webb, deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill argued, they’d have to believe that the girl was so depraved that she’d hurt herself in front of a stranger.
Defense attorney Brandy Turner asked jurors to consider how Webb could have abducted a girl in broad daylight without her putting up any struggle. No gun was ever found, Turner pointed out. Police arrested Webb so quickly that they found every piece of evidence the girl described - his clothes, his car and the sex toy - but no weapon, Turner said.
“If she’s lying about the gun, what else is she lying about?” Turner said, acknowledging that her client is “not a perfect angel.”
Webb was arrested outside an adult video store on 65th Street by Little Rock police officer Dennis Hutchins, who testified that Webb got out of his car with his pants unzipped. Hutchins, who’d decided to sweep the neighborhood’s pornography outlets looking for Webb, won a commendation from the Police Department for Webb’s arrest.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/13/2011