Judge declares a mistrial in Benton County’s first ‘Jessica’s Law’ trial

BY MICHAEL BOOTH


GAZETTE-TIMES REPORTER

Jurors deliberated for three days before determining they were hopelessly deadlocked Thursday in Benton County’s first “Jessica’s Law” child sex abuse case.

Robert Christopher Stom, 42, is charged with first-degree unlawful sexual penetration and first-degree sexual abuse of an 11-year-old Corvallis girl whom he was babysitting on Feb. 6, 2007.

The trial began Monday morning and ended around noon Tuesday. By noon Thursday, jurors were deadlocked, six to six on the charge of sexual penetration. On the sexual abuse charge, five jurors voted “guilty,” and seven voted “not guilty.”

Judge Locke Williams declared a mistrial after determining that further deliberations would not change jurors’ minds. The case will be scheduled for another trial during a hearing on July 31.

In Oregon, only 10 of 12 jurors are required to convict or acquit a defendant of felony charges, with the exception of capital crimes.

The case began Feb. 6, 2007, when Stom’s neighbor contracted food poisoning. Stom drove him to the hospital, and he and his wife later took care of the man’s 11-year-old daughter in their home.

Two days later, the girl told her mother that she woke up and Stom was molesting her — an allegation that Stom repeatedly denied during an investigation and in court.

During Tuesday’s closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Karen Stanley reminded jurors that the alleged victim’s story never changed when she told it to her mother, Corvallis detectives, a physician and, finally, the jurors.

The girl was the first person to testify in court on Monday.

Defense attorney John Rich told jurors that there was no evidence to corroborate the story.

“The bottom line is that (the girl) told a story that has turned into a nightmare for everyone involved,” Rich told jurors in his closing arguments.

Stom had been a trusted family friend and neighbor for more than five years, according to Stanley.

Stom posted $75,000 bail in February 2007, and he remains out of custody, provided he has no contact with the alleged victim.

Oregon’s version of Jessica’s Law went into effect after Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed it into law in April 2006. The bill, House Bill 3511, increased mandatory minimum sentences for offenders convicted of first-degree rape, sodomy or unlawful penetration if the victim is younger than 12 years old. The law sets the minimum sentence at 25 years. It also requires the state to supervise such offenders actively for 10 years after their sentences, and to track them for the rest of their lives.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Chris Stringer said the Stom case is the first time a Jessica’s Law case has gone to a trial in Benton County.

“It’s relatively new and it takes cases a while to get cases through the system,” Stringer said. “Undoubtedly, there’s going to be more Jessica’s Law cases in the future.”

Jessica’s Law is the informal name given to a 2005 Florida law and all other states’ laws modeled after it. The law is named after Jessica Lunsford, a nine-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped, raped and died after being buried alive in 2005 by a convicted sex offender.