HARRISBURG — The state’s highest court has denied an appeal by a Bradford man serving a sentence of 45 years in prison for raping an 11-year-old girl.
Shaun Howard, 33, is serving a sentence of 45 to 104 years for a total of 61 charges, including rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; 42 of the charges are felonies.
According to court records, Howard had forced the child to have sexual contact with him and perform sex acts.
In the appeal, Howard, represented by Warren attorney Robert Kinnear, alleged that the trial court should not have permitted sexual assault nurse examiner Cheryl Wier to testify about the victim’s statements to her, and should not have allowed into evidence a letter the victim wrote to her aunt describing the assaults.
The Superior Court opinion denying the appeal was written by President Judge Emeritus Kate Ford Elliott.
Howard had alleged Wier’s testimony should have been stricken as inadmissible because the SANE exam was “not conducted during the existence of an emergency” and there was no immediate threat to the victim.
“Appellant is mistaken,” Elliott wrote.
The victim first disclosed the assaults by “blurting out” to her mother that Howard was touching her, at which point the girl was removed from further contact with Howard, the memorandum stated. The victim’s revelation of the assaults “constituted a then-present emergency of suspected child abuse” and prompted her to be taken to the emergency room, the memorandum stated.
Regarding the letter the victim wrote, Elliott indicated the letter wasn’t written to law enforcement, it was written by the victim to her aunt. Her aunt’s objective, the judge wrote, “was to get the victim to open up about the sexual abuse.”
While Howard’s attorney had challenged the reliability of the letter, the judge agreed with trial court Judge William Morgan that there was “nothing about the circumstances that would make the reliability questionable,” the memorandum stated.
The Superior Court affirmed the McKean County Court judgment and sentence.
Subsequently, Howard sought permission to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Late last month, the Supreme Court denied hearing the appeal.
