Skip to content
Advertisement

Trial begins in Lancaster sex-assault case

Advertisement

An HIV-positive man preyed upon and sexually assaulted two 15-year-old girls in Lancaster—telling one of the “naive” high-schoolers that he was a police officer, a prosecutor alleged this week, but a defense attorney said the prosecution’s case was “based on half-truths.”

Joseph Kenneth Cornett, 42, is facing 31 counts stemming from the two alleged assaults in Lancaster, which happened roughly three weeks apart last year.

The charges include kidnapping, rape, attempted rape, lewd acts, assault, sodomy against a minor’s will, resisting arrest and obstruction, along with two alleged Health and Safety Code violations of attempted unprotected sexual activity by one who knows himself to be infected by HIV.

Before the attorneys made their opening statements, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Henry J. Hall granted a request to allow a camera in the courtroom, overruling an objection by defense attorney Michael Sindell that such and action would be prejudicial to his client.

As a cameraman began to set up equipment, Cornett stood and began walking away from the defense table.

“I’ve got kids … I’m not staying out here,” Cornett said, as a bailiff tried to get him back to his seat. “My kids are going through this, too … they’re getting picked on at school.”

Faced with a defendant unwilling to participate, the judge rescinded his earlier ruling and asked the camera operator to leave.

Hall warned everyone in the courtroom that he was “not going to tolerate any outbursts” and would remove anyone who acted out in front of the jury, referring to disruptions during an earlier hearing.

The courtroom was filled with more than a dozen spectators in leather motorcycle jackets embroidered with B.A.C.A., Bikers Against Child Abuse and “No Child Deserves to Live in Fear.”

Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami showed the jury photos of the two alleged victims, with one of the girls photographed at Antelope Valley Hospital “hours after she was sexually assaulted and sodomized by the defendant.”

Jane Doe 1 was walking home from Eastside High School on May 6, when Cornett stopped in his car and told her she could be arrested for jaywalking, Hatami said.

Cornett “promised to take her home” but instead drove her to an abandoned trailer that once served as a classroom near Lancaster Baptist Church.

“He ordered her to get out of the car,” Hatami alleged. “He had her put her hands on the wall and had her spread her legs.”

Investigators later tied Cornett to an unsolved rape case involving another 15-year-old girl from Antelope Valley High School that had happened about three weeks earlier, according to the prosecution.

Jane Doe 2 had run away from home. Scared and on the street, she ducked into a garage where she encountered Cornett and two other men, according to Hatami. Cornett offered to drive her home, but instead took her “all the way out into the desert … pulled her into the dirt and he raped her,” the proecutor alleged.

Advertisement

Latest