Appellate Court Cuts 73-Year Term of Multiple Rapist

A man sentenced to more than 73 years in prison for sexually attacking five Orange County women got that sentence cut almost in half Tuesday by the 4th District Court of Appeal in a heatedly disputed 2-1 decision.

Robert E. Morehead, now 33, was convicted of raping three women a total of eight times, and of sexual assault, burglary and false imprisonment of two other women four years ago.

Justices Thomas F. Crosby Jr. and Edward J. Wallin voted to dismiss five of the rape convictions, claiming that only three separate rapes had occurred. The other acts, they said, were part of those three rapes.

But Justice Sheila P. Sonenshine, in a strong dissent, said that to the victims each act caused them to undergo “separate humiliating violations of their bodies.”

Sonenshine added that charging Morehead with four rapes in one attack would be no different from charging him with the single rapes of four women.

But Justice Crosby called Sonenshine’s argument “nonsense.”

“The same logic would place the killer of one person with four bullets in the same category as the murderer of four persons with one bullet each; both would be guilty of four murders,” Crosby stated.

Tuesday’s decision cut Morehead’s total sentence from 73 years and four months to 37 years and four months.

Handy Horiye, the San Diego attorney who represented Morehead on his appeal, applauded the majority decision.

“I don’t agree with Justice Sonenshine that each act is a separate rape,” Horiye said. “If a woman is raped on Tuesday and then again on Friday, that’s two rapes. But that’s not what happened in this case.”

The five attacks occurred in central Orange County in August and September of 1983. The first occurred just a week after Morehead was released from prison, after serving about half of an eight-year sentence for assault with intent to commit rape.

He became a suspect after the police learned that he was in the area, and he was eventually picked out of a lineup by three of the five women. Two others identified his voice in a lineup test.

Morehead pleaded guilty to the two sexual assault incidents and wrote a letter of apology to one of the victims from the Orange County Jail. But he denied the rapes. At his trial, the victims testified that he talked about being a born-again Christian.