MAYS LANDING — A jury found Marvin Sherwood guilty of all counts in the rape and robbery of an 89-year-old Somers Point woman in 2010.
Sherwood, 29, of Vineland, testified at trial Tuesday that he was with another man when he robbed the woman’s home in the early morning hours of Aug. 3, 2010. The woman was unharmed when he left the two alone, Sherwood insisted.
That now-deceased man was the attacker, public defender Eileen LaBarre told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday morning. She identified the accomplice as Justin Street, an Essex County man who died last May after having silicone injected into his penis.
But Chief Assistant Prosecutor Pam D’Arcy pointed out to jurors that the DNA evidence, including blood and skin cells, linked just one man to the crime: Sherwood.
“You can tell that man, you know what he did,” D’Arcy said, pointing to Sherwood. “More importantly, tell him he’s not going to get away with it.”
She left them with a silent message on an overhead screen: the word “GUILTY.”
After just three hours of deliberations, the foreman used that word for every charge, including three counts of aggravated sexual assault, or rape, and a count each of armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and assault with severe bodily injury.
Sherwood didn’t show any emotion as the verdict was read. Several of the victim’s family members sat silently.
“It was a really smart jury,” D’Arcy said as she left the courtroom. “They were able to understand all the charges and the evidence.”
She credited the work of the Somers Point Police Department and the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office’s Forensics Unit.
The jury’s quick verdict seemed to show they had no question that the victim — who testified earlier in the trial — was accurate when she said one man entered her home before dawn that morning. Her name is not being published due to the nature of the crime.
The woman described that man as a 6 feet tall. The alleged accomplice was 5-foot-5 and had no ties to Atlantic County, D’Arcy said during her closing.
The victim was in bed when she heard a noise at about 1:30 a.m. Aug. 3, 2010, and went out to investigate.
She saw a male figure and yelled, “Hey, get out of my house,” D’Arcy said, recapping the testimony of the woman who will soon turn 91.
“Almost immediately, that man came upon her,” D’Arcy said.
The woman was hit and continued to be brutalized physically and sexually as her attacker dragged her around the home, eventually leaving her in her bathtub, in an apparent attempt to clean any evidence from her body.
“That’s how he left her,” D’Arcy said. “Soaking wet, beaten and battered in that bathtub.”
As D’Arcy spoke of the attack, a loop of photos cataloging the victim’s injuries played on a screen behind her: a left elbow purple and black with a cut, bruising to her thigh, her shoulders, two black eyes, a cut lip.
The victim didn’t know how long she was in the tub, where she was too weak and in too much pain to get out. Her son came over around 5:30 a.m. and she called out to him: “I’m in the bathtub. … I’ve been raped and robbed.”
The jury convicted Sherwood on 15 counts. The aggravated sexual assault charges and armed robbery carry sentences of as long as 20 years. Superior Court Judge Bernard DeLury found Sherwood guilty of a 16th charge, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, for using a knife to threaten the woman.
Sherwood testified his blood was on the knife because Street accidentally cut him with it. But DNA evidence showed Sherwood’s skin cells on the handle.
He is scheduled to be sentenced June 8, but it’s unlikely it will happen at that time. All convicted sex offenders must first be evaluated at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center at Avenel, where sex offenders are treated. It can take several months for that to be completed.
Contact Lynda Cohen:
609-272-7257
