District Attorney Will Furse said Merrick Tom, 36, of Cortez was in a \u201cblacked out\u201d state when he tied the victim down and raped her repeatedly on Jan. 3. Before leaving the scene, the defendant hid the victim\u2019s cell phone, and then walked home, Furse said.<\/p>\n
Public defender Amy R. Smith said that her client felt guilt and regret for creating \u201cevery woman\u2019s worst nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n
She argued her client\u2019s alcohol-fueled actions were uncharacteristic, and that he had shamed himself and his family.<\/p>\n
Tom\u2019s cousin read a statement requesting leniency and expressing the family\u2019s regret.<\/p>\n
Present at the sentencing hearing on Thursday, July 23, the victim didn\u2019t address the court.<\/p>\n
In a written statement to the court, Tom apologized to victim, stating she didn\u2019t deserve to be assaulted, and now \u201ceveryone suffers.<\/p>\n
District Court Judge Todd Plewe said no words could help ease the victim\u2019s \u201cunimaginable pain\u201d that resulted from Tom\u2019s \u201cheinous\u201d actions.<\/p>\n
After his prison time, Tom will be placed on supervised sex offender probation for 10 years and be required to register as a sex offender. He also was also ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution, including $1,500 for medical expenses.<\/p>\n
Tom previously has pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and a single count of attempted sexual assault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
District Attorney Will Furse said Merrick Tom, 36, of Cortez was in a \u201cblacked out\u201d state when he tied the victim down and raped her repeatedly on Jan. 3. Before leaving the scene, the defendant hid the victim\u2019s cell phone, and then walked home, Furse said. Public defender Amy R. Smith said that her client […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,533,524],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-110736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-prison","tag-sexual-assault"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110736"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=110736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}