A 33-year-old Sherwood man, already serving prison time for the gunpoint kidnapping of his longtime girlfriend, was convicted Thursday of molesting the woman's 13-year-old daughter despite the girl's courtroom admission that she had exaggerated some of her accusations.
The seven-woman, five-man jury deliberated barely an hour to find Brandon Wallace guilty of second-degree sexual assault, which carries a maximum 20-year sentence. But jurors acquitted Wallace of the more serious charge of rape, which could have resulted in a life sentence.
At sentencing, Wallace told jurors that he'd been framed by the girl's mother because he had caught the 36-year-old woman being unfaithful and she was mad he was leaving her because of it.
Sentenced to 15 years without the possibility of parole, Wallace initially refused to acknowledge Circuit Judge Leon Johnson's order that he never contact the girl or the woman again for the rest of his life.
Even after the judge explained that Wallace's refusal to sign a notice that he'd been barred for life from contacting the woman could be held against him once he gets to the penitentiary, Wallace said he didn't want to sign the notice. It took a tearful intervention by his family, particularly his sobbing mother to get him to comply.
"You show them you're stronger than this," the woman said, telling Wallace she is confident of his innocence. "You show them you're above this."
Both prosecution and defense agreed that the case rested on whether jurors believed the girl, now 17.
Defense attorney David Warford told jurors the girl was a chronic runaway who fled the family home whenever she didn't get her way. Fellow attorney Lou Marczuk said the girl resented Wallace's role as the family disciplinarian who made her do household chores and restricted her use of her cellphone and tablet computer. Wallace, a father of two, was a "by-the-book authoritarian" who had been trying to instill responsibility in the unruly child he considered to be a stepdaughter, Marczuk said.
Marczuk pointed to testimony by Wallace's mother, Lashia Griffin, and brother, Quinton Wallace, that the girl had told them months before she accused Wallace to police that she knew how to get an adult out of her life by lying about being molested because her best friend had done that to the friend's stepfather.
The girl made up the story about Wallace repeatedly fondling and groping her to get him out of her life by preventing him from marrying her mother, Marczuk told jurors.
"She has a motive to lie. She succeeded. He's gone," he said.
With the girl testifying before jurors that she had exaggerated the time frame for the abuse, Marczuk called her a liar who could not be trusted.
"Would you buy a car from someone you know lies to law enforcement ... lied to the state police, lied to people who were there to help her?," Marczuk asked in closing statements. "You have someone in front of you who has admitted they lied."
"The character assassination of a teenage girl" is how deputy prosecutor Robbie Jones described the defense arguments for jurors.
He said the girl told the truth when it mattered, during her hour-long testimony Wednesday, when she admitted to them she had told police that Wallace had been abusing her for years, instead of months. He said the core of her accusations -- her description of how Wallace would grope her at night and tell her she liked it, always while her mom was at work -- never changed. The touching began with Wallace running his hands over her body then progressed over time to him raping her by groping her, the prosecutor said.
Jones asked jurors to consider what life would have been like for a girl who was being regularly fondled by the father-figure in her life while she was growing up and going through the life changes that adolescence brings.
"On top of everything a normal teenager goes through, she's being raped and sexually assaulted by a man who's about to marry her mother," Jones said. "She has absolutely nothing to gain by sitting here and lying to you."
Testimony from Wallace's family that the girl had told them how a friend had lied about being molested is too convenient for the defense to be the truth, Jones said. She is a teenage girl, not a "James Bond villain" who would brag about planning to frame the man for rape, Jones said.
"If that's her big master plan, why is she showing [it] to his mother ... why is she telling his brother?" the prosecutor said.
The abuse came to the attention of Sherwood police in November 2014, after the girl left the house to get away from Wallace, "the night she was brave enough to stand up and tell what happened," deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall told jurors.
Police were alerted to a roadside disturbance which turned out to be Wallace attempting to persuade the girl to get in his truck and return home. While officers were trying to figure out what exactly was going on, the girl told them that Wallace had been molesting her, according to testimony. The teen testified that she had been afraid to speak up sooner because Wallace had threatened to kill her siblings and her mother then cut her throat and rip out of vocal chords if she ever disclosed what was going on. She said he described how he would use the machete that she knew he kept in a closet at their home.
Court evidentiary rules prevented prosecutors from disclosing exactly the events that followed, limiting them to only telling jurors that Wallace had become suicidal.
But four days after police learned what was happening to the girl, Wallace tricked his girlfriend into letting him back into their home, telling her that police were going to be with him while he gathered his belongings.
Instead, Wallace, angry and upset over the teen's accusations, forced the woman to leave with him at gunpoint and accompany him on a four-hour round trip that included him taking her to a secluded Cross County road where he emptied the clip from his gun into the air while berating her. He was convicted of kidnapping and aggravated assault for that ordeal at trial last September and sentenced to six years in prison.
Metro on 08/18/2017