No verdict yet in rape trial
Jury deliberations are expected to continue Friday morning at the Miller County Courthouse in the trial of a man accused of raping a former girlfriend in 2013.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated Thursday for about five hours in the trial of Frederick Kourtney
Cain Jr.,
34, before being placed in an evening recess by Circuit
Judge Brent Haltom.
The alleged victim testified Wednesday under questioning by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell that “red flags,” including aggression and a controlling nature, led her to stop seeing Cain in late 2012 after a short dating relationship. The woman testified that she was expecting a visit from an out-of-town female friend when she heard a knock at her door at about 5 p.m. and didn’t look through her peephole to see who it was.
The alleged victim said she thought that if she told Cain she was seeing someone new he would leave. The woman said Cain grabbed her wrists and began leading her to her bedroom despite her protestations. The woman testified that she repeatedly said, “No,” as Cain wrestled her pants and panties off of her as she attempted to press her knees into his chest and he pushed himself inside of her.
The woman testified that Cain rolled off of her after her sobs turned to shaking and hyperventilation.
“He said, ‘It’s not rape because we’ve had sex before,’” the woman testified.
Cain took the stand Thursday and claimed that the woman was upset because she wanted to have an exclusive relationship with him and have his baby. Cain said he wouldn’t have minded fathering a child with the woman, but he wasn’t interested in a monogamous relationship with her.
“Angry women say a lot of things,” Cain testified under questioning from Texarkana defense attorney
Jeff Harrelson.
Under cross examination, Mitchell asked Cain why the woman would have called the police after he left, told two friends immediately that she had been raped and why she would have swallowed the Plan B birth control medication given to her at a local hospital after spending hours waiting for a sexual assault examination. Mitchell also asked Cain why the alleged victim would continue to make the allegations after waiting for nearly six years for a trial if they were false.
Cain testified that Bridgette Glover, an area school teacher he met online in 2012, lied during her testimony Thursday morning. Glover testified that she met Cain online in 2012 and that the two dated and shared an apartment in Wake Village, Texas, before she broke up with him because he was “jealous and controlling.” Glover told the jury that a friend of Cain’s drove him to a bus station on either Jan. 7 or 8, 2013, while Cain testified that it was Glover who drove him to the bus station.
On the stand Thursday, Cain denied ever speaking to the Texarkana, Ark., Police Department’s Detective Paul Nall on the phone days after the woman reported she had been raped. Nall testified Wednesday that the number he called was acquired from the alleged victim’s cellphone records and that the man who answered identified himself as Frederico Cain and provided a 1992 date of birth. Frederick Cain, who was born in 1984, has a younger brother named Frederico Cain, who was born in 1992.
During the phone call with Nall, Frederick Cain allegedly admitted that he has a large tattoo of a microphone and smaller ones of a treble clef and musical note on his neck. Those tattoos were described to police when the woman reported the alleged assault Jan. 5, 2013, and were evident in photos of Frederick Cain found on social media.
Nall said that at the time of the phone call, he had no reason to suspect that Frederico Cain and Frederick Cain were two different people. Nall acquired a warrant for Frederico Cain with the 1992 date of birth and in November 2014, Frederico Cain was arrested in Michigan and extradited to Arkansas. Nall said Frederico Cain, who stood far taller than Frederick Cain, did not have the neck tattoos visible on his older brother. A warrant was then obtained for Frederick Cain and he was arrested in Louisiana and brought to Arkansas in November 2015.
During closing arguments, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Kristian Robertson reminded the jury of the woman’s statement to police and a sexual assault nurse examiner in 2013 and her testimony Wednesday. The woman gave identical accounts to her friends, responding patrol officers, a sexual assault nurse examiner, the case’s lead detective and to the jury.
“You know why? Because the truth doesn’t change,” Robertson argued. “The truth doesn’t change.”
Harrelson argued that reasonable doubt exists in the case.
“Man, if we only had a recording of this phone conversation,” Harrelson argued.
Mitchell argued that Cain just couldn’t accept hearing the word, “No,” from the alleged victim.
“He is so arrogant that he couldn’t hear that. He couldn’t believe there might be a woman out there who didn’t want him,” Mitchell argued.
Cain faces 10 to 40 years or life in prison if convicted of rape by forcible compulsion.