Judge assesses Carthage child molester 25 years in prison

Oct. 19—For crawling into a play tent that two girls put together a year ago in the living room of his home in Carthage and sexually molesting one of them, Circuit Judge Gayle Crane sent Arch "Keith" Robinson to prison Monday for 25 years.

A Jasper County jury found Robinson guilty of first-degree statutory sodomy and first-degree child molestation of the 11-year-old girl inside the tent at the conclusion of a two-day trial in July.

At his sentencing hearing Monday, the judge assessed Robinson 25 years for the sodomy count and 15 years for the molestation count, and ordered that the terms run concurrently. Under state law governing serious violent crimes, the 61-year-old defendant will be required to serve 85% of the time before becoming eligible for parole.

The victim and her sister spent the night at Robinson's home after enjoying fireworks with other family members on the Fourth of July weekend in 2020. They had constructed a "fort" out of bed covers and chairs as place to sleep that night.

The 11-year-old testified at trial that her sister was on one side of her watching a video on a phone when Robinson crawled in on the other side of her and began groping her.

He got up and left the tent at one point, and she managed to send text messages to her parents and grandmother telling them what he had done. But he came back and repeated what he had done a second time while her sibling was asleep, the girl testified.

Robinson took the witness stand to deny the allegations although he could offer no reason why the girls would implicate him in the manner they did.

Assistant Prosecutor Kimberly Fisher called a propensity witness to testify at the trial that Robinson had done similar things to her more than 20 years ago when she was a teen but had never been charged with any offense.

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