By Ashley Meeks
The Alamogordo Daily News
LAS CRUCES, NM — A felon already serving a 28-year sentence in state prison for violently raping a fellow inmate in another facility has been indicted on charges of raping yet another inmate 11 times as he held a shank to him.
Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility prisoner Joseph C. Perry, 32, was indicted Thursday by an Ana County grand jury on 11 counts of criminal sexual penetration, 11 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and a charge of possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner between Aug. 18 and Sept. 8, 2010.
Perry was convicted in 2007 by an Otero County jury of raping a fellow Otero County Detention Center inmate on Sept. 2, 2006.
Perry had been brought to the county jail for a probation violation in September 2006. On the evening of his arrival, Perry targeted an 18-year-old incarcerated in the same pod. After waiting until the other detainees were asleep, Perry stuffed a gag in the victim’s mouth and sexually assaulted him. Afterward, he threatened the victim in an attempt to keep him quiet, according to the Alamogordo Daily News.
District Court Judge Frank K. Wilson noted at sentencing in 2008 that Perry had continued to express dominance over the victim and intimidate him even at that point, the Alamogordo newspaper reported at the time.
“I have not observed more abusive behavior, brutality ... in a place where people are supposed to be safe,” Wilson said.
Deputy District Attorney Janice Schryer described Perry as remorseless, saying he glared at the victim throughout the trial.
“He (Perry) is a danger to the community when he’s out,” Schryer said. “But also, he’s a danger to the community when he’s incarcerated ... I don’t believe the defendant is rehabilitatable.”
Addressing the court at the time, Perry told the judge he had been in prison since 2002 with no prior sexual misconduct and said he had been shackled in handcuffs since the rape.
“I’m paying, even in the institution,” Perry said.
Then-District Attorney Scot Key, now a prosecutor with the 3rd Judicial District Attorney’s office in Las Cruces, said the victim was severely injured in the attack and had to get medical treatment right away. Asking for the maximum sentence in that case, Key described Perry as “a career criminal ... even being in jail doesn’t stop him from committing more crimes.”
And, indeed, Perry’s resulting sentence, which included eight years for his three prior felony convictions, does not appear to have prevented him from targeting the most recent alleged victim at the facility south of Las Cruces, a 21-year-old Tajique, N.M., man convicted of non-residential burglary and theft, according to Perry’s indictment paperwork.
About 5 percent of prisoners, more than 60,000, are sexually assaulted every year, according to a Department of Justice survey from 2007 a problem that has prompted groups from Focus on the Family and the Southern Baptist Convention to the American Civil Liberties Union to demand reform.
Perry, who is originally from New Jersey and had his first sexual assault conviction as a juvenile in Colorado in 1995, according to court documents, appears to have moved to New Mexico a decade ago. His criminal history includes convictions for dealing drugs, unlawfully possessing deadly weapon, resisting arrest, burglary, battery and fraud.
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