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Trucker gets life in prison
CLEVELAND
A Youngstown truck driver was sentenced to life in prison after a jury convicted him of crossing a state line to rape an 11-year-old girl.
Iraephraim Underwood, 59, drew the sentence Monday from U.S. District Court Judge Patricia A. Gaughan.
Underwood was convicted in February of one count of crossing a state line to engage in a sex act with someone under age 12 and one count of transporting someone under 18 in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in an illegal sex act.
The case was investigated by the FBI and Youngstown and Boardman police.
The sentence means Underwood actually will spend the rest of his life locked up because there is no parole in the federal system, explained Mike Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In a sentencing memorandum, Michael A. Sullivan, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the judge “life imprisonment would be appropriate” for Underwood because of Underwood’s 1992 conviction in Ogden, Utah, of forcible sexual abuse in the rape of a 10-year-old girl.
“He took a young child on over-the-road truck trips with him when she was 11 and 12 years old. On numerous occasions, he raped the child in his truck, as well as at her grandmother’s house,” Sullivan wrote concerning the recent case.
“He was entrusted with the care and safety of a young child, and, instead of fulfilling such responsibility, he used the opportunity to satisfy his own deviant sexual desires,” Sullivan wrote.
In the 1992 case, Underwood was put on three years’ probation with the requirement that he complete a sex-offender treatment program.
“Any such treatment was ineffective,” Sullivan wrote, adding that Underwood’s sentence in the recent case “should be one that keeps him from ever re-offending.”
A sentencing memorandum from Underwood’s lawyer, Joseph W. Gardner of Canfield, didn’t say what sentence the defense believed Underwood should receive, but it noted that he had been crime-free from 1992 until he was charged in this case.
Gardner also noted that Underwood was one of nine siblings growing up in a family that Underwood said experienced alcohol abuse and domestic violence and frequently relied on welfare benefits.
Having served honorably in the Air Force from 1978 to ’83, Underwood became a truck driver in 1999.
Although Underwood was evaluated and found competent to stand trial, he has a history of mental illness and has been diagnosed with pedophilia, Gardner wrote.