By Shavonne Potts
spotts@salisburypost.com
A Salisbury man awaiting trial for five years on rape and sex offense charges was sentenced to more than 90 years in prison Friday in Rowan Superior Court.
Glorbman Lamont Brown, 39, was charged in 2002 with five counts of first-degree rape of a child and five counts of first-degree sex offense of a child.
Court officials said Brown’s case was the oldest in the Rowan County court system.
The victim, then 11, told officials the incidents spanned from the end of 2002 to 2003. The child was known to Brown.
The Post does not release names of victims of assault.
The girl, now a high school senior, testified during the trial that began earlier this week.
Jurors found Brown guilty on three counts of first-degree sex offense of a child and three counts of first-degree rape of a child. They found him not guilty on the other four counts.
Superior Court Judge John L. Holshouser sentenced Brown to 30 years to 36 years for each of the three rape convictions and combined the three sex offense convictions with the final rape conviction.
Brown said he will appeal and asked for a new trial.
Assistant District Attorney Karen Biernacki said the victim recalls vividly what was done to her.
“He treated her like an object,” Biernacki said.
She added that the victim, “will overcome this.”
The now high school student has been accepted to college and will attend in the fall.
Besides hearing from the victim, jurors also watched a video that was taken when the girl was 12 recounting the rapes.
A doctor from Carolinas Medical Center NorthEast testified of her exam of the girl. Physical evidence was collected, including a confirmation of a sexually transmitted disease. Brown refused to let health officials test him for the same STD. However, during his stay in jail, he received antibiotics for an STD. Tests showed he’d previously been infected with an STD and the antibiotics were present, Biernacki said later.
Brown did not testify.
At the sentencing hearing, Biernacki requested the judge give the defendant the maximum for each of the offenses. Brown spoke up, saying he objected.
“I’m not guilty,” he said.
Judge Holshouser told Brown he would give him a chance to speak, but not then.
“He maintains his innocence,” Brown’s attorney Rick Locklear said.
Locklear brought up some points his client did not agree to or understand, including why the victim’s mother did not testify.
He also did not understand why some other witnesses did not show up to testify.
Brown said he was in jail when the latter part of the offenses are said to have occurred.
“All I have to say is I was in prison when she initiated the charges,” Brown said.
Brown has a list of prior convictions that date to the early 1990s in Forsyth County and 2000 in Rowan County.
According to Biernacki, Brown was convicted in Forsyth County in 1987 for larceny of a motor vehicle, in 1990 on two counts of possession of stolen goods and two years later for communicating threats.
Also in the 1990s, Brown was convicted of maintaining a dwelling for controlled substances, possession of marijuana, possession with the intent to sell and deliver marijuana, speeding to elude arrest and misdemeanor assault on a government official (reduced to assault with a deadly weapon).
Brown was charged and convicted in Rowan County on several drug charges in the earlier part of 2000, court records show.
In October 2000, he was convicted of misdemeanor communicating threats. In April 2001, he was convicted of felony possession with the intent to sell and deliver a controlled substance. In March 2003, Brown was convicted of two counts felony possession with the intent to sell and deliver marijuana, felony possession with intent to sell and deliver a schedule IV and two counts felony maintaining a vehicle/ dwelling for the purpose of using or selling a controlled substance.
After the sentencing, Locklear called the case an unusual one. From the beginning, his client indicated his aversion to an all-white jury.
Locklear said Brown pointed out there were no minorities on the jury.
A Tuesday hearing brought in Clerk of Court Jeff Barger, who explained the process of jury selection.
Barger said he told the court there is no process that ensures a mixed jury.
“This is the first time I’ve ever known it to be where there is no African-American on a jury,” Barger said by phone Friday.
Of the original 113 people summoned for this week’s jury duty, half were not delivered, excused or deferred to another jury setting.
“We had about 32 in this jury pool,” Barger said.
He recalled two potential jurors asking to be excused or deferred.
Inclement weather may have also played a role since it snowed in the earlier part of the week and many people called to say they were unable to serve.
Usually 40-65 jurors make up the pool each week to choose a jury from, Barger said.
The jurors are selected at random by a computer system. The names come from voter registration cards and driver’s licenses.
When a juror is selected, all Barger said he gets is a name and an address.
“I have no idea of race until they are here,” he said.
It was coincidence that no jurors were minorities. “In this case, that’s just the way it happened,” Barger said.
Locklear said they could have had the trial pushed back a week or so and waited for another jury pool.
Judge Holshouser, at his discretion, moved forward with the trial with the selected jurors.
“I have not seen a jury makeup like that,” said Locklear, who has been in practice for more than 20 years.
During the hearing, Brown said he would have been open to any minority, not just a black represented on the jury.