See This

See This
Famous High School Dropouts

°

Homepage / Houston News
Text Size

Jury Convicts Man Of Raping Male Teen

POSTED: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
UPDATED: 6:25 pm CST January 15, 2008

A jury convicted a man accused of kidnapping and raping five young men in Baytown during an eight-month spree in 2006.

Keith Hill, 20, was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault in the May 2006 attack of a teenager who said he was forced to perform oral sex at gunpoint after he was abducted from his driveway.

Hill displayed no emotion as the verdict was read just an hour and a half after the jury began deliberations. He did not testify and his attorney did not present any witnesses.

The victim in this case testified Monday that he thought he was going to die in the attack that began as he searched for something in his car.

He said he was blindfolded with duct tape, his hands were tied behind his back with zip ties and he was forced in the back seat of an SUV. There the assailant forced him to perform oral sex and hit him on the back of the head with a gun eight or nine times.

"I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the night," said the young man, who was 17 at the time of the attack and is not being identified because he is a victim of sexual assault.

The teen said he was then dropped off and he walked to get help.

Hill pleaded not guilty to the attacks, and his attorney said Tuesday that a confession he gave to Harris County Sheriff's Sgt. Shane McCoy last February may have been coerced.

Laine Lindsey said Hill gave the written confession after six hours of interrogation by McCoy and police officers from Baytown, the nearby refinery town where the attacks allegedly occurred.

Because there is no videotape or audiotape of the confession, it's impossible to tell whether the statement was genuine, Lindsey said.

But in his closing arguments, prosecutor Spence Graham said it should be easy for the jury to convict Hill because his semen was found on the victim's shirt and because his confession included information only the actual assailant could know.

"Clearly this defendant's guilty," Graham said.

All the alleged victims are white. Hill is black. The jury is made up mostly of white women.

Hill faces a sentence ranging from five years probation to life in prison.

Hill also faces charges of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and aggravated kidnapping in connection with the other cases. Prosecutors have said they will decide how to proceed with the four other cases after Hill's trial.

The U.S. Justice Department says one in 33 men in the United States has been a victim of a rape or attempted rape, compared with one in six women. Experts say men are far less likely to report a rape because they fear being perceived as weak.

Text Size

Sponsored Links

Links We Like

Sponsored Content
Feeling bloated or uncomfortable after eating? Try these five recipes and find out why they are so good for digestion. More

Find out what the locals say about the perks and drawbacks of living in 5 of the very best beach towns. More

To guard your job security, be sure to avoid these 10 common pitfalls. More

Don’t get suckered into spending more cash than is necessary to fix your car. Here are 5 maintenance procedures to avoid. More

Most Popular