William Gaspar-Mateo’s convictions for the rape of a child are affirmed, but the court orders resentencing due to an improper sentence on multiple counts.
The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions of William Gaspar-Mateo on charges of rape and forcible rape of a female less than 10 years of age. However, the court also vacated his sentence and remanded the case for resentencing, concluding the trial court erred by imposing a sentence on both counts for what was, legally, a single crime.
The case, William Gaspar-Mateo v. The State, centered on allegations that Gaspar-Mateo repeatedly raped his girlfriend’s daughter between 2011 and 2013, when the child was between four and six years old.
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The abuse came to light years later, in 2021, when the victim, then a middle school student, confided in a school social worker about her depression and suicidal thoughts, subsequently revealing the sexual abuse by Gaspar-Mateo.
Following a trial, a jury convicted Gaspar-Mateo on two counts: one for the rape of a female under ten and another for forcible rape of the same child. The trial court then imposed concurrent life sentences for both convictions.
In his appeal, Gaspar-Mateo challenged the convictions on several grounds, including an ineffective assistance of counsel claim and the trial court’s failure to apply the rule of lenity—a legal principle that dictates an ambiguous law with varying punishments should be resolved in favor of the defendant receiving the lesser penalty.
The appellate court’s opinion, authored by Presiding Judge Dillard, dismissed Gaspar-Mateo’s claims of ineffective counsel, stating that trial counsel’s decisions were a matter of reasonable trial strategy. This included the decision not to hire an expert witness to challenge the child’s forensic interview or to subpoena additional records. The court reasoned that the defense’s strategy was to focus on the victim’s credibility through cross-examination, and much of the information in the un-subpoenaed records was already introduced through witness testimony.
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Crucially, the Court of Appeals’ decision to vacate the sentence was based on a different legal principle. The court determined that while the state’s indictment used two separate counts, they were actually alternative allegations for a single criminal act, not two distinct instances of rape. According to Georgia law, when a single crime can be committed in multiple ways, a defendant can only be sentenced for one of those counts. Therefore, the second count was rendered “surplusage” by operation of law.
This means that while Gaspar-Mateo’s guilty verdicts stand, the trial court’s decision to sentence him on both convictions was an error. The case will now return to the trial court for resentencing, where a single sentence will be imposed for the rape conviction.
The ruling affirms the jury’s verdict but corrects the procedural error in the sentencing, highlighting the complex legal distinctions involved in prosecuting such sensitive cases.
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