"Jane Doe" - 9 yo (2006) - Joplin MO

If a Jasper County jury threw the book at Joseph W. Mort six weeks ago, the judge hit him with a second volume Friday.
The 51-year-old Mort was assessed two life
sentences by a jury that found him guilty Sept. 1 of two counts of
first-degree statutory sodomy. The rural Webb City man went to his
sentencing hearing Friday in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin
hoping to get those life terms reduced by Circuit Judge David Mouton,
the presiding judge at his trial.
Instead, Mouton upheld the jury’s decision
that Mort should spend the remainder of his life in prison for sexually
abusing a girl three years ago when she was 9 years old, and ordered
that the two life terms run consecutively. The judge had the choice of
making the sentences concurrent or consecutive.
“I find that the jury verdict and the
assessments on counts one and two are within the prescribed range and
that neither are excessive,” Mouton told the defendant prior to
pronouncing sentence.
First-degree statutory sodomy carries from 10 to 30 years, or up to life, in prison in Missouri.
Defense attorney Keith Pennick filed three motions for the judge to consider following his client’s convictions by jury.
Pennick argued at the hearing with respect
to his motion for an acquittal that the girl had given three
significantly varying accounts of the abuse during two interviews
conducted at the Children’s Center in Joplin and during her testimony
at trial.
Pennick also filed motions for a new trial
and for a reduction of sentence. The judge overruled all three motions
at the hearing.
The victim testified at trial that Mort
abused her on multiple occasions and that the abuse frequently took the
form of oral sex acts that he performed while she was in bed asleep.
She also described an occasion when Mort and an adult friend, Chad
Elliott, had her and another girl pull down their underwear so the men
could touch them.
Trial testimony showed that Mort was not
charged following the girl’s first interview at the Children’s Center.
Her second interview was occasioned by new information obtained by
investigators from disclosures of the second girl involved in the
incident with both Mort and Elliott, and of a third girl. Those
disclosures concerned Elliott’s abuse of all three girls.
It was only after Elliott was charged in the fall of 2006, and after further investigation, that Mort was charged in 2007.
But Elliott managed to receive a
considerably lighter sentence through a plea agreement with the Jasper
County prosecutor’s office. He pleaded guilty last year to three counts
of statutory sodomy and was assessed a seven-year prison term.