Man Found Guilty Of Sexual Assault

A jury in Orleans District Court took less than an hour Friday afternoon to find Derby resident Paul Tester guilty of felony sexual assault on a minor.

The jury also found Tester, 34, guilty of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child and two counts of furnishing alcohol to minors.

The two-day trial included testimony from two 15-year-old girls. One said she was assaulted and the other said she was fondled by Tester at the Will-O-Wood campground in Brownington on Aug. 6, 2005.

The girls, who were 14 at the time, had either been given drinks or stole beer from one of the girl's mothers and were falling down drunk when they met Tester in the campground and joined him at his campsite where police said the lewd acts and assault occurred.

Judge Thomas Devine set bail at $30,000 cash assurance bond. Sheriff's deputies took Tester into custody where he will stay until he makes bail.

A friend of Tester sobbed as the verdicts were announced by the jury foreman. Others gasped in disappointment when the judge said he would allow Tester to go free until sentencing, if he can make bail.

Orleans County State's Attorney Keith Flynn asked that Tester be held without bail due to the sex offender nature of the crime, calling him a flight risk.

Devine noted that Tester has no past criminal record and has family including two children in the area.

Judge Devine ordered a pre-sentence investigation by the Department of Corrections.

The trial offered a range of testimony, from personal accounts by the victims and police on Thursday to complex DNA evidence and competing expert witnesses on Friday.

The girls described how they met Tester picking raspberries and ended up with him at his tent site. One girl said he fondled her. The other said she went into his tent with him and knew she had had sex because it hurt.

A registered nurse gathered evidence when the girl who claimed she had been sexually assaulted was taken to the emergency room at North Country Hospital. She said the girl's genitals showed evidence of forced sex.

Defense Attorney Trudy Miller challenged both the girls' testimony and the way the nurse prepared what's called a rape kit for forensic evidence.

During closing arguments Friday, Miller said there were too many differences in the girls' stories. "One of them lied," Miller said.

Friday's witnesses traced the rape kit trail from hospital to the Vermont Forensics Laboratory in Waterbury, as jurors learned the ins and outs of how to handle DNA evidence as well as what this kind of microscopic testing can show.

State forensic chemist Tracey Canino said she found sperm heads on the samples from the girl.

Joe Abraham, a state forensic chemist specializing in DNA testing, said one test showed that the DNA in a sample taken from the girl was a match for Tester, with the odds of being wrong at 22 quadrillion to one.

Miller questioned typographical errors made in the forensic worksheet, which were caught and corrected by Abraham.

Defense expert Donald Riley, an associate professor at Washington University, challenged the procedures used by the state, raising questions about whether the samples were handled properly and the tests done correctly.

Riley said the samples weren't in airtight bags while in the state police barracks evidence room. Skin cells from clothing and a comforter taken from Tester as evidence could have become airborne in the evidence room and contaminated the samples from the girl, Riley said.

Police and state scientists said they followed standard procedures.

Flynn reminded jurors in closing arguments that Canino found sperm in the samples, not dead skin cells.

"There weren't strange flying sperm cells flying around in the state police barracks," Flynn said.

Flynn called the defense expert "a hired gun" who made $1 million over a decade in work for defense teams.

In closing arguments, Flynn said the girls' testimony might have had differences, but their statements put them with Tester, who took advantage of them.

"He preyed on those girls and that's what this case is about," Flynn said.

Tester did not testify.

After the verdict, when Flynn sought jail without bail until sentencing, Miller said that Tester had a right to maintain his innocence throughout the trial.

A sentencing hearing date will be set by Judge Devine.