A 46-year-old Sherwood man accused of raping a woman with a 3-foot-long snow brush was cleared of wrongdoing on Friday by a Pulaski County jury.
David Ronald Kinder had testified that the woman used the tool on herself during their consensual sexual encounter.
Jurors deliberated about 40 minutes before acquitting the father of three of rape after a two-day trial before special Circuit Judge Hugh Finkelstein. The Class Y felony charge carries a potential life sentence.
Defense attorneys Annie Depper and Blake Hendrix told jurors that the woman had lied to police and to them about what had happened, all to keep from being exposed as a thief who had been stealing money from Kinder’s children, somewhere around $20,000 over the past 10 years.
Kinder was just about to find out what she had been doing, Depper told jurors. Kinder believed she’d stopped after he warned her what would happen if he caught her at it again, the attorneys said.
By accusing him of rape, the woman hoped to keep her reputation and win a significant financial settlement before he could expose her, the lawyers said.
“She knew she was caught,” Depper said in her closing argument. “She knew she had everything to lose. But with this rape allegation, she tips the balance.”
The accuser’s DNA on the handle of the brush contradicted the woman’s claim that her hands had never touched the tool, Depper said. The woman also did not have the kind of injuries that would be expected if she’d been violently violated with the bristles, used for removing snow and ice from cars, the attorney told jurors.
Kinder told jurors the July encounter began when the woman started touching him. He said she’d just begun paying restitution for the money she had taken from his sons, Drew and Ethan Kinder, who also testified.
“I was feeling good. [She] was feeling good,” he testified. “She started hugging me, and then her arm moved down.”
They were both aroused so he gestured to the nearest bedroom, he said.
“I said, ‘What do you think?’ and she said, ‘Great,’” Kinder told jurors.
As he was getting undressed, Kinder said, he could see the woman, already naked, on the bed, searching the room with her eyes, apparently looking for something.
“I saw the car brush right there,” he said. “She saw me pick up the car brush and the first thing she did was grin. I handed it to her.”
After she was finished with the tool, he dropped it beside the bed and they had sex, Kinder told jurors. Then, they got dressed, she made herself a sandwich, and he dropped her off at her part-time job, he testified.
Kinder said he was surprised when police showed up a short while later to arrest him for rape.
In closing arguments, prosecutors Jayme Butts-Hall and Michelle Quillen told jurors that Kinder’s lawyers were trying to distract them from what he had done.
“Just because someone is in financial distress, it doesn’t mean they can’t be raped,” Butts-Hall said. “She was not safe in that house with David Kinder.”
He bullied her into submitting to him and violated her with the brush to show his control over her, the prosecutors said.