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  1. #1
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    Immigrant found guilty in cold case sexual assault of Princeton woman

    By Bridget Clerkin/The Times of Trenton
    on May 09, 2014 at 7:17 PM, updated May 09, 2014 at 7:32 PM

    A case that was considered “cold” for years and unlikely to ever be solved came to a conclusion this week, when a jury convicted a man of dragging a Princeton woman into a township park and sexually assaulting her.

    Humberto Gonzalez, 26, was found guilty of kidnapping, criminal restraint and several counts of assault and could face up to 50 years in prison for the May 22, 2005 incident.

    The victim, who was 53 at the time of the attack, was immediately taken to the hospital after the attack and a DNA sample of the assailant was recovered and recorded in a national database, but there was little more for detectives to work with than the few details the woman remembered and a sketch based on her vague description of the man.

    Despite an effort by the Princeton Police Department to solve the crime, the case went cold for five years.

    In 2010, the big break came, when a match for the DNA sample hit. Belonging to Gonzalez, it was entered from Texas, after he had been booked there for an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a separate case.

    Excited at having finally identified a likely suspect, but still proceeding with caution, Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor Robin Scheiner immediately ordered another DNA sample be taken from Gonzalez. When that, too, turned out to be a match, she arranged for him to be sent to New Jersey after serving out his two-year sentence in Texas for his crime there.

    “When you get a hit on a cold case, it’s just an investigative tool,” Scheiner said. “We had to make sure it was him.”

    But the DNA match was compelling evidence. According to Scheiner, once the DNA match was confirmed, the odds that someone else perpetrated the Princeton crime shot up to one-in-20.9 quadrillion.

    Faced with the evidence that the DNA found on the woman was his, Gonzalez — who was 17 at the time of the crime but was tried as an adult — claimed the woman had consented to having sex with him. He said the 53-year-old woman was on the prowl, standing on the corner and asking to have some fun with him, Scheiner said.

    “With the DNA evidence really eliminating the odds that it was anyone else, he had to say it was consensual,” Scheiner said.

    Residing in the country illegally, Gonzalez also has a criminal history in Louisiana and Arkansas.

    While the victim and her family were not able to make it to court when the verdict was read, Scheiner said they were crying tears of joy over the result — and the closure that came with it.

    “It was unbelievable,” Scheiner said. “The husband was crying, the son was crying, and she was just screaming on the phone that she couldn’t believe it. She was so happy.”

    The verdict also offers Scheiner some closure. With the chance to retire at the beginning of the year, she chose instead to bring this last case to trial and will retire at the end of the month.

    “To be 53 and have this happen to you — it just meant a lot to me to be able to do this for her, and to do this for her family,” Scheiner said. Still, she demurred, “It’s never about me, though. It’s about the victims and helping them find justice.”

    http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2...ton_woman.html
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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    PRINCETON: Illegal immigrant sentenced in 2005 rape case

    DATE POSTED: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 2:29 PM EST
    By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

    An illegal immigrant convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in a Princeton playground in 2005 was sentenced Friday to 25 years in state prison.

    "It’s over," said Mary Lessard after seeing her attacker, Humberto Gonzalez, receive his punishment. Ms. Lessard, a Princeton resident who was 53 at the time of the rape, agreed to have her name disclosed in the media.

    Mr. Gonzalez’s penalty — 25 years for kidnapping and eight years for the sex assault to run concurrently — was less than what the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office had been seeking. Assistant Prosecutor Michael Borgos asked Mercer County Superior Court Judge Pedro J. Jimenez Jr., sitting in Trenton, to give Mr. Gonzalez 28 years for kidnapping and nine years for the rape, both to run consecutive, or back to back.

    He told the judge how Mr. Gonzalez grabbed Ms. Lessard, out for a late night walk, on a bike path along Guyot Avenue on May 22, 2005, threatened her with a folding knife and dragged her to the playground. He urged the judge to give the stiffest sentence possible so that Mr. Gonzalez "does not do this to anyone else."

    Defense lawyer Malaeika Montgomery countered by asking the judge to consider Mr. Gonzalez’s youthfulness in rendering his punishment. He was 17 at the time, although authorities suspect that he was lying about his true age.

    Ms. Montgomery added Ms. Lessard’s only physical injury was a scrape on her left knee during a sexual encounter that Mr. Gonzalez said was consensual.

    Mr. Gonzalez, requiring interpreters to translate for him during the sentencing, declined the judge’s offer to say something on his behalf.

    The judge, ultimately, declined to run the two sentences back to back.

    "The judge gave him what he thought was just," Mr. Borgos said outside court.

    Mr. Gonzalez, believed to be 27 years old, must do 85 percent of his 25-year-sentence before becoming parole eligible. He received 1,599 days of jail credit that will shorten his stay in prison. He is "most likely" going to appeal his conviction, Ms. Montgomery said outside court.

    A little more than nine years has gone by since Ms. Lessard was raped and Mr. Gonzalez was sent to prison for the crime. In between was the ordeal she and her family went through, first getting through the initial impact of the crime, waiting years for her attacker to finally be identified and then facing him again at trial in May.

    Mr. Gonzalez, originally from Guatemala, had been living on Witherspoon Street.

    Mr. Gonzalez left Princeton, but he got into trouble in Texas for an
    aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. That would turn out to be a huge break for law enforcement back in Mercer County.

    Sentenced in 2009 to two years in a Texas prison, he was required to give a DNA sample — a positive hit for authorities in New Jersey. In her statement to the judge, Ms. Lessard recalled the knock on her door from the detective telling her the news.

    As the case progressed, Mr. Gonzalez had spurned prior plea bargain offers, one calling for five years and another calling for 10. Waived up to adult court, he stood trial this year and was convicted on May 9.

    He will serve his prison term in New Jersey and then ultimately be deported, never to be allowed back into the country. Technically, he will be a Megan’s law sex offender, one of the consequences of his conviction.

    Ms. Lessard came to the courthouse in Trenton with her husband, taking a seat on a front-row bench opposite the defense table where Mr. Gonzalez sat. She was joined by former assistant prosecutor Robin Scheiner, who tried the case, and Mary Effie Gunther, a victim witness advocate in the prosecutor’s office.

    Ms. Scheiner delayed her retirement from the prosecutor’s office until Ms. Lessard’s case was over.

    http://m.centraljersey.com/articles/2014/11/21/the_princeton_packet/news/doc546a5d2993779299362450.txt

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