Robert E. Kelley - U.S. Navy - Convicted Sex Offender - Lewd Act With A 8 Year Old Child. Read the entire case.

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Name: Robert E. Kelley

Case: People vs. Kelley (1967) 66 C2d 232

Date Of Conviction: March 22, 1967

Plea: Guilty

Charges: Lewd Act With A 8 Year Old Child

Military Branch: U.S. Navy

Listed In National Sex Offenders Registry? NO

Defendant appeals from an order granting probation after convictions of violations of sections 288 and 288a of the Penal Code (lewd or lascivious act against a child under the age of 14 and sex perversion).

Defendant, while at home on leave from the Navy in January of 1964, resided with his wife and 8-year-old stepson. Victim testified that one night while his mother was absent from the house, defendant came into his bedroom and sodomized him. He also testified that defendant promised him a particular type watch if he would not tell anyone what happened, and that he did not say anything to his mother until October 16, 1964, after defendant had failed to bring home the kind of watch promised.

Defendant's wife testified that when she told defendant in October what David had said, defendant "seemed shocked" and did not reply, and that two days later he said in a telephone conversation, "I believe Davie. This must have happened, but I know I do have blackouts and do not remember it." She thereafter related these events to Officer Morse of the San Diego Police Department.

Officer Morse testified that at approximately 8:45 a.m. on December 10, 1964, he spoke to defendant at the security office of the San Diego Naval Station where defendant was then stationed, and that he told defendant "that he didn't have to make any statement to me regarding the case that I was inquiring about, that anything that he said could be used against him in court, and that he was entitled to an attorney now and at any time that I talked to him." (Italics added.)

When he told defendant that he had been accused of sexually molesting his stepson, defendant said, according to the officer, that he drank considerably and often blacked out and that it was possible he could have done it but that he could not recall having done so.

At 9:30 the same morning, after Officer Morse had departed, Charles Kerr, who was employed by the San Diego Naval Station as a criminal investigator, interviewed defendant in Kerr's office at the Naval Station. Kerr testified that he informed defendant that he was accused of sodomy in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, that he had the right to remain silent, that he could not be compelled to answer any questions that might incriminate him, and that anything he said orally or in writing could be used against him in a court martial. Nothing was said about the right to counsel. Defendant read and signed a form containing the provisions of 9 Uniform Laws Annotated section 602 which provides that every accused shall be informed of his privilege against self-incrimination but is silent concerning the right to counsel. fn. 1

Kerr testified that during the course of the interrogation which lasted nearly four hours defendant made statements the substance of which Kerr dictated into a recording machine. The recording was reduced to writing and read and signed by defendant later that morning. In that statement defendant confessed to having committed the acts with David and also admitted certain prior sexual activities with other people. In the latter connection, it is stated that when defendant was in the Navy in 1940 (24 years previously at age 19) he accepted a ride from a man and was taken to his apartment.