OKLAHOMA CITY – A Marlow man serving six consecutive life sentences for child sexual abuse, plus 20 years for 12 counts of possession of child pornography, will probably die in prison.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals turned thumbs down recently on a petition from Matthew Willoughby Hale, 42, who was convicted by a Stephens County jury in 2019 of molesting a minor child several dozen times.
“The evidence in this case” was “overwhelming and compelling,” the judges wrote in unanimously upholding the sentences.
During the trial, the jury was told that the pornography charges arose from an FBI investigation that dated back to 2017.
Also, Hale’s computer, an external hard drive, and other electronics were confiscated and sent to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation for examination with programs that can recover deleted items. As a result, an OSBI employee testified that on Hale’s computer she located 36 photographs of child pornography and two videos pertaining to the same material.
The child, who was younger than 12 at the time, testified that Hale “told her to go to the converted garage, where he exhibited pornographic videos to her.” Afterward, Hale sexually abused the girl “in excess of 50 times, including forcing her to sodomize him and to engage in sexual intercourse with him.”
Hale argued that he should have been charged with “what he deems is the more specific crime of forcible oral sodomy rather than with the general crime of child sexual abuse.” Yet he never raised that argument prior to his appeal.
Hale also objected because the 12 pornography charges, which were filed in 2017, and the six child sexual abuse charges, which were filed in 2019, were combined at trial. He claimed that the two cases were not related nor “part of the same series of criminal transactions.”
The appeals court, though, ruled that the crimes stemmed from Hale’s “deviant sexual attraction to children” and all involved “sexual exploitation of a child for sexual gratification.”
After “thorough consideration” of his complaints “and the entire record before us on appeal ... we have determined that under the law and the evidence,” Hale “is not entitled to relief,” the judges wrote.
Hale was confined at the North Fork Correctional Center at Sayre as of June 20, state Corrections Department records showed.