Escapee sentence may get 2nd look

20 years ago, court faulted his penalty

Not long before Joseph Midyette escaped from a Union County prison, the state Court of Appeals found fault with the sentence putting the convicted rapist behind bars for 60 years.

But more than 20 years have passed since that ruling, and the resentencing hearing that was ordered has yet to be held.

This week, six months after an Indiana traffic stop ended Midyette's life on the run, Durham lawyer Freda Black plans to broach the resentencing issue in Wake County court.

Midyette, 48, went on the lam Dec. 13, 1988, assuming more than a dozen aliases and using phony Social Security numbers and birth dates.

During that time, investigators told The Associated Press, he racked up a rape charge in 1991, a case that put him behind bars for five years in Indiana under his assumed name, Bruce Youngs.

Crime scene technology was not as sophisticated then as now, when computer databases with fingerprints and other revealing information can quickly lead investigators to the true identity of a suspect using a phony name.

For more than a decade, Midyette lived as Bruce Youngs in Greenfield, Ind., taking on a demolition business and a wife and family who claimed to know little of his past, according to The Daily Reporter in Greenfield.

But in December, a sheriff's deputy from Hancock, Ind., pulled the escapee over for suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

That stop led to an Indiana investigator's search of a fingerprint database that eventually revealed Midyette's identity.

Midyette, according to Black, his attorney, waived extradition and was returned to North Carolina's Central Prison on Dec. 30.

Black plans to take Midyette's case before Judge Orlando Hudson, a Durham judge doing a stint in Wake County Superior Court.

On Oct. 6, 1987, the state Court of Appeals ruled that a Wake County judge had made an error on July 24, 1986, when sentencing Midyette for three counts of second-degree rape and one count of second-degree sexual offense.

In giving 15 years for each count, the judge considered the defendant's relationship with his victim. They had met once, according to court documents, on New Year's Eve, 1984.

Then on Jan. 29, 1985, the woman responded to a knock on the door of her Raleigh apartment.

Through the peephole, she could see a man, but did not recognize him until he reminded her of their previous meeting.

The defendant told the woman he needed to use her phone. It was snowing outside.

She opened the door with her 2-year-old son with her. The defendant tried to get someone on the phone, but after failing to reach anyone moved toward the victim.

First, the defendant pushed the victim to the couch and sexually assaulted her, according to court documents.

Then, he pushed her down the hall into a bedroom and sexually assaulted her twice more, court documents show.

In his appeal, Midyette argued he should not have been convicted of three counts of rape, that the incident was one attack in two rooms.

One member of the three-judge appeals court panel partially agreed. In a dissenting opinion, the judge said the two rapes in the bedroom should be considered one.

But the issue that sent the case back to the trial courts for resentencing was whether Midyette abused a relationship of trust and confidence when he attacked his victim.

The defendant argued there was no such relationship and that the sentence should have been shorter because the judge considered abuse of trust an aggravating factor in the 15 years handed down for each count.

"The evidence shows merely that the victim was acquainted with defendant: it does not show the existence of a relationship between them through which the defendant would occupy a position of trust and confidence," the Court of Appeals said.

Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said several days ago that he vaguely recalled the Appeals Court ruling but was not aware of the attempt to reschedule the sentencing.

Willoughby said he did not know whether the escape would affect the case.

"If he's to be brought back on resentencing, he's certainly entitled to that," Willoughby said. "It would probably be awkward for you to complain that it hadn't been dealt with in a timely manner."