Published: September 08, 2008 09:40 am      

Conviction of Bronston man upheld by court

Local News

A Bronston man convicted of tampering with evidence in a case involving the videotaping of children at a local swimming pool has had his sentence upheld by the Kentucky Court of Appeals, according to the Common-wealth Attorney’s office.

Luther W. Sexton, 68, was convicted by a jury in November of 2006 of tampering with physical evidence and disorderly conduct and given a 12-year prison sentence.

Following the trial, Sexton’s Attorney, Robert Norfleet, said he didn’t feel that “the justice system worked” and that jury’s decision should be overturned because of a significant number or errors Pulaski Circuit Judge Jeffrey T. Burdette made in admitting evidence, including the admission of prior sexual abuse investigations.

However, the Court of Appeals found that Burdette had made “no error” in admitting any of the challenged evidence.

“It was clear what this man was and is,” said Assistant Common-wealth’s Attorney Jeremy Bartley of the Court of Appeals decision. “This is a great result. I hope Sexton draws his last breath in prison, because that’s the only way he won’t hurt another child.”

According to Bartley, who prosecuted Sexton’s case, evidence showed that on July 21, 2005, Sexton went to the Burnside Pool, where a group of young children from Pulaski Public Child Care were on a field trip. The group’s director noticed a man crouched near the pool with a camera taping the children. By the time authorities were contacted, the suspect had fled the scene, but one of the parents on the trip had taken the make, model and license plate of the man’s vehicle.

Deputy Troy McLin of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department went to Sexton’s home and asked to see the camera and video. Sexton produced a video which McLin briefly reviewed, and McLin sought a search warrant to obtain all the videotapes that he found in Sexton’s home. When the Sheriff’s Department returned with the search warrant, the tape that Sexton had earlier shown the officers could not be found, and Sexton told officers that he would not give up the tape.

Other tapes that were confiscated showed clips of naked children taken from movies. During preparation for trial, Bartley discovered that Sexton had been prosecuted in multiple states for child-oriented sexual assaults. Additionally, Sexton was on bond from Wayne County, where he was facing even more sexual abuse charges, and was ordered not to be around young children.

At trial, the officers from Ohio and Florida testified that Sexton had often taped young children and met his victims in beach and pool areas. One tape from an earlier Florida investigation showed Sexton recording young children in bathing suit and zooming in on their genitalia.

The Court of Appeals found that Sexton’s prior acts showed motive, and that the prior “experience certainly gave him motive, knowledge, and absence of mistake for tampering with physical evidence that might be used against him … Sexton was well aware that a videotape of children could be used to incriminate him in Wayne County.”

Bartley was pleased with the appeal’s outcome.

“The Court of Appeals echoed what we already knew: Judge Burdette gave this man a fair trial,” said Bartley. “Despite what his attorney would have had the jury believe, this man was preying on children and Judge Burdette made the right to decision to let the jury see him for what he was. Without this evidence, Mr. Norfleet would have misled the jury into believing that this man was doing no harm. His past caught up with him.”

Sexton remains committed to the penitentiary serving his 12-year sentence.