Jury finds rapist, now 71, guilty in decades-old case
WEST PALM BEACH — John Arthur MacLean wasn’t in the courtroom Friday to hear the verdict, but a jury found the 71-year-old convicted sex offender guilty of raping a Boca Raton mother 41 years ago.
MacLean will be sentenced at 10 a.m. Aug. 13. Consider- ing his age and the fact he faces sentencing for another armed sexual battery convic- tion, MacLean may spend his remaining days incarcerated no matter what punishment Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath imposes.
MacLean is suspected in numerous sexual assaults in Boca Raton during the 1970s and four women — two of whom were girls at the time — testified for the prosecution during MacLean’s trial.
“After 42 years, these women were finally able to get justice,” prosecutor Marci Rex said.
The verdict from the jury of four women and two men was announced while MacLean sat in a holding cell inside the Palm Beach County Courthouse.
On Thursday, MacLean asked that his presence at Friday’s hearing be waived because he didn’t want to be “part of the party” if he were convicted.
MacLean nodded in the direction of the victims seated behind him in the courtroom as he made the comment.
Colbath granted the request. The prosecutors in MacLean’s case — Rex and Brianna Coakley — said they’ve never been involved in a case where the defen- dant chose not to hear the verdict.
The jury deliberated for about four hours before coming to a decision.
The case against MacLean hung on a single piece of evidence, a vaginal swab taken during a medical examination of the Boca Raton mother the day she was attacked in 1977.
Attorneys for MacLean countered that the DNA evidence, which remained in a storage box at the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office for decades, was contaminated because it had been kept with evidence from other cases.
Other evidence, including fingerprints, was either destroyed or lost over time.
The victim, now in her late 60s, testified against MacLean. So did another woman who was 15 years old and working as a babysitter when she was sexually assaulted in 1976. A jury convicted MacLean of raping the girl in April and he is awaiting sentencing.
Testimony also came from two sisters who were 14 and 18 in February 1976 when they were allegedly raped in Boca Raton by MacLean. DNA tied MacLean to that case, but a statute of limitations in place for armed sexual batteries made it impossible for prosecutors to charge him with the crime.
The statue of limitations for armed sexual battery was removed by state lawmakers later in 1976.
MacLean may have gotten away with his crimes if not for convictions in Arizona during the 1990s for attempted sexual exploitation and burglary. MacLean’s DNA was entered into a national database and in 2005, Boca Raton police investigators used it to connect him to the rapes.
The “party” that MacLean said would keep him from attending Friday’s hearing never took place. Like the defendant, the four women who testified they were raped by MacLean did not attend the hearing.