Court Upholds Finderne Man's Conviction, Sentence for Mugging

 A state appellate court has rejected a Finderne man’s appeal of his conviction of mugging a woman in Somerville and the eight-year prison sentence he received.

The court rejected Victor Rouse’s claim that he did not receive a fair trial and that his sentence was excessive.

Rouse, 43, of Sunnyslope Road, is now serving eight years in state prison for an Oct. 7, 2009, mugging on East Main Street in Somerville. Rouse will not be eligible for parole from Bayside State Prison in Leesburg until July 24, 2016.

According to court papers, the female victim, who had gone to McCormick’s Pub in the Hotel Somerset in Somerville to play pool, went outside alone between 8:30 and 9 p.m. that evening to smoke a cigarette.

When the victim went outside, she called a friend on her phone from a tunnel that leads to the courtyard of the hotel, court papers say. As she was on the phone and smoking a cigarette, the victim testified that a man came up to her, leaned against her and asked for a cigarette.

The woman gave the man a cigarette and a lighter, court papers say. When he gave the lighter back to her, the man asked for money. When the woman said she didn’t have any money, the man said “I’m not asking you for money, I’m telling you to give me money,” she testified.
 
After an exchange, the woman tried to push the man away, but he grabbed her arm, but she managed to get away and when a friend from the bar appeared, the man started to walk in the opposite direction, court papers say.

The woman then reported the incident to Somerville police who said she appeared “visibly shaken.” After being given a description of the suspect, police stopped a man, later identified as Rouse, about 150 yards west of the hotel. Police then took the victim in a patrol car and drove to where the suspect was detained where she immediately identified Rouse and said she was 100 percent sure of his identity, court papers said.

But the woman was not able to identify Rouse at the trial, court papers say. She testified that though Rouse resembled the man who had mugged her, his clothes and demeanor appeared different. A police officer testified that Rouse had appeared to gain a “considerable amount of weight” — more than 50 pounds —  in the year between the incident and the trial.

Rouse argued that the victim’s failure to identify him at trial raised issues that could lead to the reversal of his conviction.

But the appellate court ruled that that Superior Court Judge Robert Reed’s instructions to the jury “properly guided the jury on how to address and harmonize the victim’s identification of a man who was possibly 50 pounds lighter at the time he committed this offense.”    

Rouse had been found guilty after the jury deliberated for four hours.