Serial rapist gets another 22-year term
Anthony Smith will be locked up until he’s at least 85 years old before he can begin serving a prison term for his latest rape conviction.
The victim of that attack appeared relieved Friday when 22 years were added to the time Smith already is serving for two other rapes.
She cried softly in the front row of a Franklin County courtroom when Common Pleas Judge Kim Brown gave Smith the maximum sentence for raping the woman in her Near East Side apartment in 1996.
Smith, 55, told the judge he didn’t want to make a statement before sentencing.
The victim did not speak during the hearing and declined to comment afterward.
Her testimony, along with DNA evidence, was crucial in a jury’s decision on Aug. 9 to convict Smith of rape, kidnapping and aggravated burglary.
The woman, who was 19 at the time and now is 40, cried during her testimony as she described waking up in her apartment on July 20, 1996, to find a man sitting on her bed, where she had been sleeping with her nearly 2-year-old daughter.
She said the intruder implied he had a gun and made her take her daughter to another bedroom. He then took the woman back to her room, stuffed a T-shirt in her mouth and forced intercourse.
“It’s safe to say (the victim) experienced every woman’s worst nightmare,” Assistant Prosecutor Kacey Chappelear told the judge.
The crime remained unsolved until 2015, when Columbus police submitted evidence from the woman’s rape kit to the state crime lab. A database provided a DNA match with Smith, who is serving a sentence for rape in Michigan. Last year, another DNA match led a Cuyahoga County jury to convict Smith of a 1995 rape in Cleveland.
His conviction in Michigan, for a 2010 rape, will keep him in prison there until at least 2025, although he could be held until 2040. Whenever he completes that sentence, he will begin serving a 22-year term for the Cuyahoga County case. If he lives long enough, that will be followed by the Franklin County sentence.