Rapist given 495-year term for LR attacks

Can’t imagine your pain, judge tells victims’ families

On his 41st birthday Wednesday, a Little Rock man found responsible at trial last week for a January 2001 rape and armed robbery rampage was sentenced to 495 years in prison, a sentence that will require him to serve almost 340 years before he can qualify for parole.

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Marlin Lynn Brown, who had last appeared before special Judge John Cole crying in his underwear, was composed Wednesday and wearing a blue jail uniform with handcuffs and leg shackles. His only response to the judge was a quiet “yes, sir,” when Cole informed him of his appeal rights.

Brown had been linked through DNA to three attacks over three weeks in the Hillcrest neighborhood.A Pulaski County jury convicted him of all charges - one count of kidnapping and three counts each of rape and aggravated robbery - in 90 minutes to conclude a three day trial. He did not testify, and his defense challenged the quality of the testing that determined his genetic material was a match to semen found on the victims’ bodies.

As a violent offender with convictions for robbery and bank robbery, Brown faced 40 years to life in prison. Jurors recommended the next-harshest sentence available, 80 years apiece on the rape and robbery counts, 40 years on the kidnapping with an additional 15 years for using a gun, giving the judge a range between 80 years to 535 years in prison.

Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence to reflect the suffering Brown put each victim through.

“There were three separate victims who had to endure three separate events at the hands of this defendant,” she said.

Cole stacked all of the prison time but the kidnapping count. He denied a defense request to give Brown credit for the time he’s spent awaiting trial, slightly more than two years. Brown is not entitled to that credit, the judge said, since he is in federal custody on a sentence of almost 29 years - 346 months - for robbing a bank on R Street in the Heights neighborhood in March 2002.

Ordered to pay $3,848 in restitution after his October 2003 trial, he had been scheduled for release for that crime in December 2019. He cannot apply for parole for the Hillcrest rapes until 2351.

Defense attorney Dan Hancock challenged the legality of Brown’s conviction, arguing that the statute of limitations for the crimes had expired. He also asked the judge to immediately overturn the convictions and order a new trial on the basis of Cole’s explanation to jurors of why Brown was absent during part of final arguments on Thursday.

Brown was gone because he had been forcibly removed from the courtroom by bailiffs after stripping off his suit to his underwear and becoming hysterical during a restroom break. Cole told jurors Brown had been excused because he had become emotionally unstable.

Brown required formal sentencing because he was at the hospital Oct. 10 when jurors returned their punishment recommendation. He had cut his wrist and claimed to have swallowed a razor blade while jurors were deliberating. The prosecutor said no blade was ever found, even after an X-ray, and Brown has shown no signs of illness since that night. Brown did not appear injured at Wednesday’s hearing.

None of the three victims attended the proceeding, which lasted about 12 minutes, mostly for the judge to read Brown the verdict.

Cole commended the women’s composure during the trial to the family representatives who did attend.

“It’s beyond my imagination the grief and emotion you have been through,” the judge said.

Brown was charged after an FBI database linked his genetic material to the Hillcrest rapes, a test subsequently confirmed by the state Crime Laboratory in November 2011, two months after the charges were filed.

Prosecutors said the three victims were young, petite blondes surprised in their homes by a man who put a gun to their head, covered their faces so they couldn’t see him, threatened to kill them if they tried to look at him and who escaped after putting the women in a closet or small room. The rapist also would turn up the volume on a TV or stereo so his victims could not hear him leave. None of the women could ever identify their attacker.

Police were further able to link him to the third attack after one of his fingerprints was found on a beer bottle inside a stolen Porsche that had been driven by a man seen leaving that victim’s home immediately after an attack.

Brown had faced additional rape, aggravated robbery and kidnapping counts over allegations he forced the boyfriend of one of the victims to have sex with her at gunpoint. Prosecutors dropped those charges at the start of trial after the man, now a 38-year-old New Orleans doctor, stopped cooperating with authorities.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/17/2013

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