JACKSON —
The Mississippi Supreme Court has reinstated the conviction and 35-year sentence in a Stone County rape case for a man convicted of committing a similar crime in Pike County.
The state Court of Appeals last November ordered a new trial for Anthony Mercie Expose, who had been convicted of rape in 2010.
The Appeals Court ruled that the trial judge failed to instruct the jury on Expose’s claim that the sex was consensual.
The court said Expose was entitled to a jury instruction that embodied his theory of the defense.
The Supreme Court overturned that decision in a ruling Thursday.
Prosecutors say the woman was raped along a rural Stone County road on March 28, 2009.
Expose was charged in a similar case in Pike County in June 2009, when he allegedly assaulted a 19-year-old woman in McComb and ran over her with her own vehicle on Old Liberty Road.
He was indicted in the case, and a trial is tentatively set for February.
While in the Pike County jail, sheriff’s officials said he created havoc in August 2011 when he allegedly broke an overhead nozzle attached to the jail’s sprinkler system and hurled a mop bucket at a tower overlooking the jail’s four cell blocks, damaging a window.
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