NewsMax.com
Friday, March 23, 2001

The rapist-killer's older homosexual partner, to be tried separately, could be put to death if convicted.

A Bentonville, Ark., jury on Thursday found Joshua Macabe Brown guilty of raping, sodomizing and then murdering Jesse Dirkhising in 1999 in an apartment Brown shared with Davis Don Carpenter, 39.

Prosecutors said the victim was drugged, bound, raped and sodomized, then suffocated because of the drugs and the way he was folded over and strapped on Brown's bed.

Initially, Brown told police it was only "horseplay," in which Jesse was a willing participant.

Later, Brown admitted binding, gagging and raping him with a variety of objects.

Carpenter, who prosecutors say choreographed the assault and watched from a bedroom door, is to be tried May 7 for rape and capital murder, which carries the death penalty.

The jury had no difficulty imposing a sentence of a quarter of a century in prison for Brown, but it was divided on what to do about punishing him for the boy's murder.

Eleven members wanted to impose a 10- to 20-year sentence for the first-degree murder. One held out for a life imprisonment.

Referring to Brown's partner, Carpenter, one of the jurors said later:

"Many times we thought we were trying the wrong man."

They compromised by leaving the murder sentence of Brown up to Judge David Clinger, who scheduled a sentencing hearing for March 30.