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Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Catherine Fantuzzi (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
James McDowell — aka Sisa Butu — will have to serve at leat 24 years of the term, making him 77 before he’ll be eligible for parole.
Superior Court Judge James J. Guida cited several factors — including that McDowell, 53, was convicted of terrorizing his victim with a loaded .357 Magnum while making degrading comments about women, calling them “bitches” who should “know their place and keep their mouths shut.”
Jurors last July convicted McDowell of eight counts from a 15-count indictment, including first-degree aggravated sexual assault, false imprisonment and weapons possession.
He was acquitted of kidnapping, criminal restraint, and six counts of sexual assault during a kidnapping.
Butu’s victim told the judge today that she’d considered McDowell a friend before her day/night of terror.
“The first six months after the rape, I was unable to sit on anyone’s couch or go into their living rooms,” she said. “I was unable to drive by myself without a chaperone.
“I used to be an avid speller and reader,” she told Guida. “I can no longer comprehend what I read or write. My husband has to remind me to brush my teeth, change my clothes and pay my bills.
“Your honor, he stole my joy. I avoid crowds, I’m not sociable, and I don’t dance. I used to travel, give parties and cookouts — just because. Now I have no energy, and after four years of therapy and counseling — I am nowhere near where I used to be.
“I thank you, the jury, the detectives and my lawyer for making justice possible.”
Defense attorneys asked the judge to consider McDowell’s age and the fact that he was highly intoxicated when a casual lunch turned horrific. He may have thought he was back in a relationship with the woman, one said.
McDowell, meanwhile, insisted on his innocence.
James McDowell, aka Sisa Butu, with attorneys in court today (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
“I respect the process of the court today,” he said. “I’m not bitter or angry. It is not time for that — it’s time to be truthful. I say again: I’m innocent.
“I believe in the system, it’s going to work. I did five years, nine months and 18 days in the military defending this great country, fighting for it,” McDowell told the judge. “I understand there’s an appeal process, and you have the most difficult job making a decision.”
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Catherine Fantuzzi chided McDowell for using words such as “character” and “integrity” in describing himself to the judge.
Although he had no previous convictions, McDowell had been arrested at least a dozen times as an adult, she said. Charges have included perjury, being a fugitive, and child endangerment, records show.
“There is truth with character and integrity,” Fantuzzi said, noting that the jury crafted a very careful verdict that supported the victim’s “excruciatingly exact and detailed” testimony.
“All of the physical evidence in this case supported the victim’s version of what had occurred,” she said. “The gun, the vomit in the garbage can, the bullet hole in the ceiling, the washcloth in the bathroom — all of those things in her testimony were supported by the physical evidence.”
Statements that McDowell made outside of court — he didn’t testify in his own defense — were found to be untruthful, Fantuzzi added.
For example, she said, he claimed the .357 magnum was the victim’s, not his.
“He’s very manipulative and very reckless with the truth when he wants to put himself in a better light,” the prosecutor told the judge.
Fantuzzi cited a dispute with a neighbor in which a bullet was retrieved that matched one that police said McDowell fired into the ceiling “when he was threatening to shoot the victim in the back if she didn’t have sex with him.”
After running a popular chain of hair braiding salons in Brooklyn, McDowell began distributing hair care products under the name SBXtreme “for the multicultural hair care market,” according to company information.
His former girlfriend testified during the trial that she had gone to see her dentist in Jersey City and was planning to visit her father in Irvington when she swung by his Tryon Avenue home in September 2010.
He’d told her he wasn’t feeling well, said the woman, who now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.
After going out to lunch, she said, they had some drinks at the house and watched music videos. She said she was preparing to leave because her husband would be expecting her when things got ugly.
McDowell got the gun from a cabinet and fired a round into the ceiling, the mother of two told jurors.
“I love you too much,” she said he told her. “If you try to leave, there’s going to be a double homicide.”
He then sexually assaulted her under threat of death in his living room and bedroom before becoming ill after drinking nearly a full bottle of cognac, the woman testified.
McDowell was vomiting, she said, when she grabbed her clothes, dressed quickly and ran to a neighbor’s house for help.
“The man there let me in, closed the door and turned off the porch light while I called first the police and then my husband,” she told the 11 men and four women on the jury.
Local media initially reported what came next as a standoff, but an exclusive report in CLIFFVIEW PILOT explained that McDowell was passed out as a tactical squad surrounded his house, tried calling him for a few hours and then finally used tear gas to flush him out.
McDowell emerged naked and was taken into custody.
Citing case law, the judge today said drunkenness — “especially voluntary intoxication” — can’t be considered in favor of a convict.
The judge said he merged two of the sexual assaults in calculating the sentence but that others were counted separately because McDowell “commenced intercourse downstairs, and was unable to complete it, so he took the victim upstairs and continued the act.
“He then allowed her to go the the bathroom and clean up,” Guida said. “There was a break, and after that he went back downstairs and he assaulted her again.”
So, the judge said, he was sentencing McDowell to 18 years for first-degree aggravated sexual assault, and another 10 years for forced oral sex committed after the “break.”
McDowell must register as a Megan’s Law offender for life, remain under parole supervision after he is released, never again have contact with the victim or her family and submit a DNA sample.
Guida also denied bail to McDowell, who has appealed the conviction based on what he said were challenging questions that weren’t presented during jury selection.
McDowell is due back in court April 6 on another indictment that accuses him of assaulting a juvenile with a knife, injuring him, and failing to obtain needed medical attention for the victim.
STORY / PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia
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