Sex Offender Found Not Guilty Of Dungeon Rapes

[matcom]

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DARLINGTON, South Carolina (AP) -- A jury has acquitted a convicted sex offender of charges he raped two teen girls in an underground bunker.

The jury found Kenneth Glenn Hinson, 48, not guilty of kidnapping, sex crimes and assault with intent to kill.

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Authorities had charged that Hinson snatched the 17-year-old girls from their bedroom last year and dragged them one at a time to the underground room hidden beneath a tool shed, where he raped and bound them with duct tape. Prosecutors said Hinson expected the girls to die because the room had no air supply.

However, Hinson testified during the six-day trial that the girls had consensual sex with him. He said they made up the story so they would be able to take drugs from the underground room, which he used to store marijuana.

The two young women were not in the courtroom when Hinson was acquitted. Their mothers and other relatives wept. They declined to comment after the verdict.

If convicted, Hinson had faced a mandatory life sentence without parole under the state's two-strikes law because he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1991.

The underground room was about the length and width of a mid-sized car with a ceiling about 41/2 feet high. Hinson testified Sunday that he had built the room behind his trailer where he lived.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/23/dungeon.trial.ap/index.html