Jury takes 20 minutes to sentence Texas man to life for sexually abusing girl for years
A Texas man was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for sexually abusing a child for years at his home in Wise County.
A Wise County jury reached the decision on the sentence against 67-year-old Audie Lee Butler, according to court records.
On Wednesday, jurors in the 271st District Court in Decatur convicted Butler of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14, needing just 20 minutes to deliberate on the verdict to convict him and then just about the same amount of time to sentence him, according to the Wise County Messenger.
The victim, who went by Jane Doe to conceal her identity, was one of three witnesses who testified, the Wise County Messenger reported. Often in tears, she told jurors that Butler abused her over the course of several years when she was younger than 14.
The Wise County Messenger reported that the victim said she spent years trying to convince herself the sexual abuse didn’t happen before realizing when she got older that she needed to report it.
“I knew it did happen, no matter how many times I said that it didn’t,” she told the jury.
The case was filed in the summer of 2020, according to court records.
Prosecutors also played a video interview of Butler in which he admitted the abuse to an investigator with the Wise County District Attorney’s Office, the Messenger reported.
This story was originally published July 15, 2022 at 10:16 AM.
