Rapist gets life term in teen's assault
He was found guilty of assaulting a girl, then 15, at a Tulsa apartment in 1999.
A previously convicted rapist received a life prison term Monday from Tulsa County jurors who found him guilty of raping a girl seven years ago.
Jose L. Pagan was charged in 2000 with the October 1999 rape of a girl, then age 15, at a Tulsa apartment.
An arrest warrant was issued in February 2000, and Pagan was arrested on the charge in Connecticut in early June 2005.
He has been in the Tulsa Jail since June 23, 2005.
Tulsa prosecutors originally charged him with first-degree rape and kidnapping.
While the trial was in progress last week in District Judge Tom Thornbrugh's court, a prosecutor amended the rape count from first-degree to second-degree and dismissed the kidnapping count.
Jurors convicted Pagan of second-degree rape Monday and imposed a life term that allows the possibility of parole.
The victim, who is now 22 and living in California, has said the defendant -- whom she knew by the name of "Scooby" -- attacked her and forced her to have sex with him.
Assistant District Attorney Mickey Hawkins said he believes that force was used, but by amending the allegation to second-degree rape, that issue was removed as an issue for jurors to deliberate.
Based on their ages, any sexual intercourse between Pagan and the victim would constitute second-degree rape, he said.
Pagan, 41, did not testify. When questioned by police in 1999, he asserted that he did not have sexual intercourse with the teenager and did not rape her.
Seminal fluid was recovered from the girl's underwear, and the defendant provided a mouth swab for DNA comparison.
A 2006 analysis at a private laboratory in Florida -- using a new method of DNA testing -- concluded that Pagan could not be excluded as a source of the fluid on the girl's underwear, a report shows.
During a sentencing stage, jurors learned that Pagan had been convicted of rape in Massachusetts in 1986.
Hawkins said that victim was also a 15-year-old girl.
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