Texan admits rape, gets 10-year term
A Texas man whose rape conviction and 25-year prison sentence were overturned on appeal has accepted a 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to rape.
Sentencing papers filed Wednesday by deputy prosecutor Melissa Brown show that Robert Glenn Brown, 46, pleaded guilty in exchange for the 10-year term from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. The sentence, negotiated by Public Defender Bill Simpson, is the minimum for a Class Y felony.
Robert Brown will have to serve seven years before he can apply for parole. He has already spent three years in custody. In September 2017, a Pulaski County jury convicted Brown of raping a 12-year-old Little Rock girl. He received a sentence of 25 years in prison.
The Arkansas Court of Appeals voided the verdict last March, ruling that an Instagram message that the girl received, which prosecutors told jurors was “practically a confession,” should not have been allowed as evidence. The girl’s mother found the message in October 2016 and reported it to police, which led to Brown’s February 2017 arrest.
The appeals court found that prosecutors could not prove that the message, which also told the girl to commit suicide, had come from Brown.
Brown denied sending it, but prosecutors said the message writer knew things about the girl that no one but Brown could know, including that Brown had sex with her when she was 12. She was 14 when the case went to trial.
The girl testified in a pretrial hearing that she had first exchanged Instagram messages with Brown in 2014.
She said she recognized the message in question as coming from him, even though it came from a different account than he had used before. Both accounts, however, had the same profile photograph of an Indian baby and the same slogan, “Family sticks up for family.”
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 [b **** ].”
Brown was charged with raping the girl in Little Rock between September 2014 and October 2014, but the girl never told anyone, police said.
Her mother testified at that trial that she never suspected Brown had abused her daughter. She said she saw nothing amiss between them at the time.
Her daughter got very upset when Brown suddenly left town without warning, but she eventually appeared to get over it, the woman said.