A Pulaski County jury on Wednesday acquitted a Little Rock man who said police coerced him into confessing to raping a 9-year-old girl and giving her sexually transmitted diseases.
The 11 women and sole man deliberated about 90 minutes to clear 21-year-old Josh Lee Britton after a two-day trial. He faced a potential life sentence.
Britton does not go free, however, because he is scheduled to stand trial next month on aggravated robbery and battery charges over accusations that he shot a gas station clerk in January while he and another man were holding up the North Little Rock store.
Jurors in the rape trial were not told of the pending trial.
Testifying as the only defense witness on Wednesday, Britton said he never touched the girl sexually and would never do that. He said he had only gonorrhea, so he could not have given her both gonorrhea and chlamydia.
"I'm telling you, I didn't do it at all," he testified, saying an unfaithful girlfriend had infected him.
He said he was suffering so much pain from his venereal disease that he could not have sex and that his doctors had advised him against intercourse.
"I really couldn't do much without it hurting," he said.
Authorities estimated the girl was assaulted sometime in January 2014. Britton testified that the only time something could have happened between them was a visit that month to her Little Rock home when he was very drunk.
Britton said he couldn't remember anything between the time he lay down on the bed and when he woke up the next morning.
In two interviews with police a week apart after the girl's condition was discovered and reported to police in May 2014, Britton told detectives that the girl had oral sex with him both times.
In the second interview, after his June 2014 arrest, he also described how he had groped her, which is how prosecutors said she was infected.
In court, he acknowledged giving detailed descriptions to police about what he did that night and sexual acts that had occurred with the girl.
But he testified he was only telling investigators what he thought police wanted him to say.
"I was just telling them anything they wanted to hear," he testified. "They kept pressuring me to say something I didn't do."
His descriptions of watching TV were based on things he'd heard from his relatives, not things he'd done himself, Britton said.
"Me being a sexually active male, I was telling them [police] things I had been told," he said, saying he felt pressure from relatives to account for how the girl was infected.
The law does not allow a conviction based only on a confession, so prosecutors were required to show proof that Britton had been telling detectives the truth about what had happened to the girl.
He had been charged with two counts of rape because of the fondling and oral sex accusations.
Special Judge Ted Capeheart told jurors that he had to dismiss the oral-sex rape accusation for lack of evidence, and defense attorney Willard Proctor repeatedly reminded jurors of the dismissal in closing arguments.
Proctor told jurors that they should similarly acquit Britton of the remaining rape count because medical evidence demonstrated that Britton could not be the source of the girl's chlamydia and gonorrhea.
Whoever infected the child would have had to have both diseases, Proctor said, citing the testimony of Dr. Jerry Jones, the child abuse expert who examined and treated her in 2014.
"There's nothing ... that will corroborate that Josh is guilty of rape. The evidence proves it [his innocence]," Proctor said in closing arguments. "Josh couldn't have been the one who did this because he did not have chlamydia."
The attorney also pointed to the testimony of the girl, now 11, who said she was touched by Britton while she was asleep. The sixth-grader, who spent about seven minutes on the witness stand Tuesday, also said she has never seen Britton's genitals.
Deputy prosecutor Michael Wright called Britton's guilt a matter of "common sense."
He told jurors that the girl was not as forthcoming as he had hoped she'd be, but that her statements to police were not the only evidence pointing to the defendant's guilt.
She also did not want to testify, Wright said, saying they could see her reluctance when she was on the witness stand.
The prosecutor pointed out that the girl had told police that Britton had told her to stop "being a snitch."
In court, she, said she could not remember making that statement.
He urged jurors to again listen to the interviews detective John Trent conducted with Britton to see whether they could hear any kind of coercion by the officer.
He asked them to think about how quickly in both interviews Britton admitted to rape, saying that for them to believe Britton was pressed into admitting the crime, they would also have to believe he confessed just to end the interview and get on with his life.
He also asked them to consider the possibility that Britton also caught chlamydia after a negative test in January 2014.
"Not testing positive is not proof you never had it," Wright said. "Don't be fooled because he didn't test positive for chlamydia on one specific day."
Metro on 08/27/2015