Convicted Rapist Gets 764-Year Prison Sentence
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A man who sexually assaulted 10 women -- many of them elderly and disabled -- in Los Angeles and Orange Counties was sentenced Friday to 764 years and eight months in prison.
Robert Charles Lee, 42, was convicted March 26 of 36 counts, including nine counts of forcible rape and 13 counts of forcible oral copulation.
Authorities said the victims were attacked in their homes, many at knifepoint, between 1997 and 2006.
During the trial, Deputy District Attorney Martha Carrillo presented DNA evidence linking Lee to the assaults, which began in October 1997 with an attack investigated by the LAPD's Harbor Division. Police and prosecutors said Lee followed a similar pattern in attacking his victims. One of the victims was attacked on two occasions.
Lee, who lived in Fullerton, was arrested in June 2006 after DNA evidence linked him to attacks in Los Angeles, Gardena, Carson and Brea.
Defense attorney Patricia Green argued during the trial that there was no "pattern" or "commonality" implicating Lee in the assaults. She noted that in their testimony, some of the victims described their assailant as a Hispanic, and two of them said the attacker stood 5 feet 7 or less in height.
Lee is black, and 6 feet 1 inch in height.
"The commonality? The pattern? There isn't one," Green said in her closing argument.
Lee was also convicted of six counts of burglary, four of sexual penetration by a foreign object, one of sodomy by use of force, and one of assault with intent to commit a felony.
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