A serial child rapist, convicted by jury of sodomizing his 6-year-old nephew – only to be set free two years ago by a Manhattan judge – is going back to jail, thanks to an appellate-court decision yesterday.
Air Force vet Juan Cordero, 56, of East Harlem, faces 25 years in prison for raping his nephew, who had crawled into his uncle’s bed for consolation from nightmares.
The boy had won an initial victory in 1996 when a jury convicted Cordero based on statements by the boy and his family – and key physical evidence, including a can of cooking oil used in the heinous assault.
But Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Patricia Williams – now a judge in The Bronx – overturned the jury’s conviction and set Cordero free in a decision that earned the condemnation of law-enforcement and Gov. Pataki.
Williams ruled that the boy was not mature enough to know what it meant to swear to tell the truth on the Bible before testifying.
Her detractors were furious that the boy’s word on the stand meant nothing – as, apparently, did Cordero’s history of child raping, which was also excluded from the trial.
Cordero, a part-time mechanic, had been court-martialed from the Air Force in Germany in 1979 for bedding his 14-year-old daughter. He was also accused of abusing four of his young step-children – ages 4 to 8 – in a 1971 case that remains under investigation.
In 1985, Cordero beat charges that he raped a 9-year-old stepdaughter when the girl’s mother refused to let the girl talk to prosecutors.
In their decision, a five-judge panel of the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled that the boy clearly did have “sufficient intelligence and capacity to be sworn in as a witness.”
Cordero could not be reached for comment, and was not in custody as of last night. Officials are still working out the details of his sentencing.