Second conviction yields triple the sentence

PORTLAND – An Oregon man whose 2007 sexual assault conviction was overturned has been retried and convicted again.

This time, Joseph Worth received a sentence of up to 120 years – triple the prison sentence he received in his original trial.

The Oregonian reported Judge Janice Wilson used Worth’s declaration in 2007 that he “should have just killed” the victim to hand down a harsher sentence.

Worth was convicted of cutting the then-17-year-old girl with a pocket knife, choking her and sexually assaulting her in a portable toilet.

The 53-year-old Worth could be eligible for release in 49 years.

Before his sentencing Friday, Worth appeared confident.

“All you people are here for me?” he said as he glanced toward the victim, now 21, and her family.

When Wilson denied Worth’s request to delay the hearing, he became agitated and slammed his hand on the table. The outburst drew several Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies to Worth’s table, and one drew a stun gun.

“Shoot me! Shoot me! Go ahead!” Worth said.

Worth’s original conviction was overturned. The victim testified at the second trial, in September. According to her testimony, she was walking home from a movie in Gresham on April 14, 2007, when Worth approached her, offered her drugs, then offered to buy her a drink. When she refused his advances, he pulled her to the ground and dragged her by the hair to a portable toilet and stripped off her clothes before sexually assaulting her.

“He told me to pretend that I loved him,” she testified in September.

He tied her hands with her own shirt and left. She waited a few minutes, then ran home.

Worth, in his testimony, acknowledged that he had been in Gresham in April 2007 and had been in the same portable toilet on the night of the rape to inject a heroin-cocaine combination called a speedball.

But Worth said he had never seen the girl before and had no idea how his DNA was found on her body.