Man convicted in rape, robbery

A 43-year-old Spokane man was convicted Friday of raping, seriously injuring and robbing a 68-year-old woman last July – leaving her with coins for bus fare and with a moral dilemma.

Testimony in Mi-cheal Jefferson’s trial indicated he made the victim, a devout Christian, promise not to call police after he left.

Asking whether she wanted to die, Jefferson made the woman repeat several times that what happened was to be kept among him, her and God. So her first calls were to her sister and to a priest, to discuss the morality of calling police.

Deputy Prosecutor Ed Hay said he didn’t know what advice the priest gave, but he presumes it was that a bargain under duress is no bargain. The victim called police, but was unable to give officers more than a general description of her assailant.

She was unable to identify Jefferson when police identified him from fingerprints. The prints were on a plastic patio chair and on a telephone whose cord Jefferson used to tie up the woman.

The fingerprints matched those Kootenai County authorities obtained from Jefferson when he was convicted of drunken driving. They were the primary evidence against him.

Defense attorney Rob Cossey invited jurors to perform their own fingerprint analysis, which Hay thought was a bad idea. Cossey also suggested in closing arguments that police should have tried harder at the time of Jefferson’s arrest to check out his claim to have been with a group of people – whom he couldn’t identify except by street nicknames – when the crime occurred.

Jefferson implied in his testimony and in various letters to authorities that he believed police conspired to convict him, and planted his fingerprints.

Jurors deliberated about eight hours, starting Thursday, before convicting Jefferson as charged with first-degree rape, first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and first-degree kidnapping.

Jefferson faces a minimum of 15 to 20 years in prison when Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly sentences him on June 21. Rielly will set a minimum term, but a parole board will decide whether Jefferson ever gets out of prison.

To be released, Jefferson will have to convince the state’s Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board that he is no longer dangerous.

Police say the case is a rare example of a stranger rape, in which the rapist and victim had no prior contact. Jefferson, who lived in Browne’s Addition, is believed to have chosen his victim completely at random.

He climbed up a cinderblock wall at her apartment building on North Cincinnati in the Gonzaga district and attacked her on her second-story balcony when she stepped outside about 10:30 p.m. on July 9. Jefferson knocked the woman down, demanded money and forced her into her bedroom.

The victim said Jefferson demanded money and bank cards. She told him she didn’t know where her bank card was, and gave him $7 – all the money in her purse except for some coins. Jefferson agreed to leave the coins when the woman told him she needed bus fare for an appointment with her heart specialist the next day.

She quickly freed herself after Jefferson left, and was treated at a hospital for injuries suffered in the attack.