One year to the day after three South Salt Lake girls were sexually abused during a backyard campout, their attacker was found guilty of six first-degree felony charges, including rape of a child.
After deliberating about an hour Monday, a 3rd District Court jury found Raymond Lynn Butterfield, 38, guilty of aggravated burglary, rape of a child, sodomy upon a child and three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child for the May 17 attack of three girls ages 10, 11 and 12."We're thrilled," prosecutor Susan Hunt said. "This just shows what (the victims) said is the truth. It's the right guy. There's no question. We had three witnesses that testified he did this."
During the six-day trial, jurors heard testimony from the three girls, who pointed to Butterfield as their attacker from the witness stand. Jurors also heard evidence linking a blood stain on Butterfield's undergarment to his oldest victim.
Butterfield stood emotionless as all six guilty verdicts were read. Family members and friends of the three victims began to shed tears after the guilty verdict on the second charge, rape of a child, was read.
Butterfield faces a maximum 50 years to life in prison when sentenced by Judge Sheila McCleve July 12, Hunt said.
"I'd wish nobody would ever go through what we went through," the father of two of the victims said. "It's a relief knowing that he's behind bars, and he's not going to get off."
The father, who said he found it difficult to be in the same room with Butterfield, chose to wait outside the courtroom as the verdicts were read.
"When I look at him, I feel like choking him," he said.
During closing arguments, Hunt re-emphasized the testimony of all three girls identifying Butterfield as their attacker. She also stressed the validity of the DNA tests, run at the Utah State Crime Lab, that linked blood on Butterfield's undergarment to his oldest victim.
"You've heard no evidence of where that blood came from except by the sexual assault," Hunt told jurors.
Defense attorney Lisa Remal argued the accusations against Butterfield were all cases of mistaken identity.
"Somebody did these horrible things to those girls, but it wasn't Ray," Remal said during her closing argument.
She then argued none of the girls could clearly identify Butterfield with the limited lighting in and around the tent where two of the girls were attacked. She also said the lighting near the couch in the living room where the third girl was attacked was insufficient to clearly identify Butterfield.
Remal then attacked the prosecution's DNA evidence by citing testimony from the defense's own expert witness, Dr. Christie Davis, a microbiologist who works for an independent DNA consulting firm in San Francisco. Davis listed a dozen problems with the STR (Short Tandem Repeats typing) process prosecutors used to prove their case.
"In this particular case there were some actual problems with the testing," Remal said, which include unknown solutions involved in the testing and the possibility of human error entering into the process. "There's a lot of subjective decisions that a person has to make."
But Hunt reiterated that the prosecution's DNA expert witness, Dr. Pilar Shortsleeve, has more than 10 years of training in DNA testing. Although this was the first case in Utah where STR testing was admitted in court, the process has been used in other states for about a decade, she said.
Hunt also countered the argument of insufficient lighting by pointing out the attacker told the girls to close their eyes and then put blankets over their heads: "He knew that they could see him because he could see them."