Perry man sentenced to life

More than eight years ago, in the early hours of April 4, 2013, a masked man unlawfully entered a woman’s car while she was on the inside of a local convenience store. When she returned to her vehicle, he forced her at gunpoint to drive to a secluded area where he then assaulted her.

When the woman was able to escape, she immediately reported the crime to Warner Robins Police, but because her attacker had been masked, she could not identify who the person was who had held her captive and violated her. This lack of information caused the case to go cold.

In 2015, another Warner Robins woman was victimized, and the DNA that was recovered during a sexual assault exam matched the DNA from the 2013 case. However, because the attacker was masked in that incident as well, that case also continued to go unsolved … until three years ago.

It was then, in 2018, when the DNA profile belonging to 26-year-old James Deaquon Staton—shown in official paperwork to reside on Houston Lake Road in Perry—was entered into CODIS as a part of his processing in an unrelated burglary charge. Further testing of his collected DNA connected Staton to both earlier crimes.

Last week, a sentencing was finally handed down. A Houston County jury in Houston County Superior Court convicted Staton of rape, kidnapping, aggravated sodomy and aggravated assault on Thursday, August 19. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Assistant District Attorney W. Donald Kelly served as prosecutor in the case, and in a statement released after the handing down of the sentencing, Kelly said that the facts presented in the case showed Staton to be a sexual predator. He further stated, “We appreciate the jury for their service and in returning a verdict that speaks the truth. We think Judge Lukemire’s sentence sends a strong message that violent crime will be taken seriously in Houston County.”

Those given credit for working diligently on solving this crime included Warner Robins Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of investigation Crime Lab and lead investigators, Lieutenants Mark Wright and Brett Rozier.

HHJ News