Prosecutors will be allowed to show a jury a social media message purportedly sent by a rape suspect to his 14-year-old accuser, urging her to kill herself, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims ruled on Monday.
Robert Glenn Brown, 43, of North Little Rock is charged with two counts of rape, accused of sexually assaulting the Little Rock girl in 2014, when she was 12.
The discovery of the message last October by the girl's mother led to the woman learning that her daughter had been raped, according to a police report. The woman found the message, about a week after the girl received it, while checking her daughter's social media accounts, the report said.
The communication came from Instagram user robbm00, who sent it as a direct message to the girl through the photo-sharing service.
According to the message, which was presented to the judge, when the teen said she did not want to talk to the sender, robbm00 apologized to her.
"All u ever do is apologize. I don't want to hear it anymore I'm done with u," the girl responded, stating that she had twice tried to kill herself. "I have lost everything. I have nothing and I have no one not anyone."
"Well honey I love you," robbm00 replied.
"Ur love makes me sick," the girl answered. "Please just leave me alone."
Robbm00 responded, "Just go kill you self. U would be better off dead. U have nothing left to live for. Go ahead end what no one cares about. I bet no one would even notice you were gone. I hope you die bitch."
Defense attorney Matt McKay argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to use the communication at Brown's trial next week.
He said that the message should be barred because authorities have no solid proof that his client sent it. They have no way to connect Brown to the robbm00 account, McKay said. Anyone could have created the Instagram account and sent the message, he told the judge.
Brown testified that he did not send the message to the girl, saying he'd never communicated with her over social media.
Deputy prosecutor Melissa Brown argued that the girl's testimony was sufficient to qualify the messages as evidence to go before the jury.
She said prosecutors consider the messages practically a confession to the accusations, telling the judge that whoever was communicating with the girl knew she'd been raped before the girl had told her mother or gone to Little Rock police.
In her testimony, the girl told the judge she first exchanged Instagram messages with Robert Brown in 2014.
She said she received the message at issue on Sept. 26 and recognized it as coming from Robert Brown, although it came from a different account, robbm00, than he had used before.
Both accounts had the same profile photograph and the same slogan, "Family sticks up for family," the girl, now 15, testified.
Metro on 09/12/2017