ELLSWORTH, Maine — A Lamoine man has been sentenced to serve 12 years behind bars for raping his daughter.
Kevin J. Cobb was sentenced Monday morning in Hancock County Superior Court by Justice William Anderson. Anderson gave Cobb an overall sentence of 22 years with all but 12 years suspended and, after he is released, a probation term of 10 years.
Anderson gave Cobb consecutive sentences on separate charges. The first sentence is for 16 years with all but 12 years suspended and a probation term of six years. The second sentence was for six years, all of it suspended, with four years of probation.
Cobb was convicted by a jury last June of multiple counts of gross sexual assault.
According to court testimony, he began inducing his daughter to give him oral sex in 2000, when she was 10 years old. He also was accused of giving her Valium and of trying to have intercourse with her in Calais and in Orono. The pattern of sexual assaults continued until 2006.
Cobb, wearing blue inmate’s clothing, wept at the defense table as his daughter, now 19, read a long statement at his sentencing.
“Why do you consider yourself an angel sent from heaven when you belong in hell?” the daughter asked, looking up from her notes to look across the courtroom directly at Cobb. “I hate you. You did something very, very wrong. You victimized your own daughter. You are no longer my father.”
Before Cobb was sentenced, his defense attorney, Jeffrey Silverstein of Bangor, had requested Anderson to grant Cobb a new trial. Silverstein said the jury reached a verdict too soon after listening to a recording of a phone call the daughter had made to her father in early 2007. The fact that they reached a verdict within 15 minutes after listening to the recording indicates that jurors did not individually weigh each count against Cobb, as they had been instructed to do by the court. Also, the recording did not accurately represent what Cobb heard during the phone call, when he was standing on a Florida beach and was distracted by activity going on around him, Silverstein said.
The judge denied the request.
Silverstein, who was not Cobb’s attorney during the trial, said after the sentencing that he believes his client will file an appeal.
