VAN NUYS : Repeat Sex Offender Gets 78-Year Term
A North Hollywood man convicted of repeatedly raping a woman while he was on parole in another sex case was sentenced Monday to 78 years in prison.
Lawrence Vernon Jones, 27, was convicted of 12 felony counts in the Sept. 11 assault of a 23-year-old woman near Magnolia and Cahuenga boulevards in North Hollywood.
When Jones confronted the woman, who was walking alone to a store to purchase cigarettes just after midnight, she attempted to defend herself with a rock, according to testimony at the trial. But Jones disarmed her and used the rock to beat her. The woman testified that Jones also choked her.
“During the course of the next four hours, he terrorized her,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen M. Cady wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “He raped her at least three times and sodomized her at least three times.”
In sentencing Jones, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Sandy Kriegler said he used “a high degree of cruelty.”
Jones was on parole after being convicted in 1988 of assault with the intent to commit rape.
Jones was arrested four days after the attack, when the victim saw him walking down a street.
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