By Joe Gerrey
The Journal and Courier
A man already serving a 120-year prison sentence for three home invasions and a rape is on trial this week for two additional home invasions.
Steven L. Barlow, 29, was sentenced last August to 120 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of eight felony counts, including three burglaries, rape, confinement and theft.
Between July 23 and July 26, 2005, Barlow broke into two homes in north Lafayette and one in West Lafayette. In two of the break-ins, the female residents were attacked. In the other, Barlow ran away after the female resident called for help from her son.
This week, Barlow is on trial in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 for two similar burglaries that occurred a month earlier than the other two.
On May 18, 2005, an elderly woman was battered and sexually assaulted about 1:30 a.m. in her apartment at Briarwood Apartments off Indiana 38. The following day, a middle-aged disabled man was beaten in his apartment about 6:30 a.m. in the Briarwood complex.
The woman testified today that she had just arrived home from a bar and locked her apartment door when someone knocked. She refused to open the door and told the man to go away.
But the man began pounding on the door, and she dialed 911. She said she wasn’t able to complete the call before the man had broken down her front door and was standing in her apartment holding a large kitchen knife.
The victim was unable to provide a detailed description of the man, who was black, taller than her and wore a hooded sweatshirt.
“All I looked at was the butcher knife,” she said.
He attacked her sexually and stole her purse before fleeing.
Jurors listened to a recording of a 911 call apparently made after the attack.
Police suspect that the following morning Barlow forced his way into the apartment of one of the woman’s neighbors. There the middle-aged, disabled resident struggled with a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a kitchen knife.
In his opening statement to jurors, Barlow’s court-appointed attorney, John Sorensen, stressed that witness descriptions of the suspect in the two attacks are vague and inconsistent. He predicted there would be reasonable doubt about whether Barlow was the attacker.
The trial began after Barlow rejected a tendered plea agreement that would have required him to plead guilty to two Class A felonies without facing any additional prison time.
Deputy prosecutor Laura Zeman outlined the plea offer during a pretrial hearing last week, when Judge Thomas Busch denied a defense motion for a delay in the trial.
If convicted on any of three Class A felonies — one count of criminal deviate conduct and two counts of burglary with a deadly weapon — Barlow could face another 20 to 50 years in prison. He also is charged with theft, a Class D felony.
The trial is expected to conclude late Wednesday.
Copyright 2007 The Journal and Courier