EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains graphic language of a sexual nature.
After four days of testimony, an Ector County jury convicted an Odessa man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl. They then sentenced him to life in prison.
Dakota Lee Hoyt, 30, was convicted of three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Prosecutors alleged he sexually assaulted the girl and forced her to give him oral sex in October 2020 and sodomized her in July 2021.
The jury took 3.5 hours to convict Hoyt and half an hour to render his sentence. Hoyt was facing 25 to 99 years or life in prison on each count. Judge John Shrode of the 358th Ector County District Court granted a motion by the state to run two of the sentences consecutive to one another. He could not run the third sentence consecutively because the act took place on the same day as one of the other offenses.
In asking for life sentences, Assistant Ector County District Attorney Melissa Rayne told jurors the victim may not ever be able to process what happened to her, but she will be able to thank them one day for “keeping her safe, for keeping that man away from her.”
Hoyt will not ever be eligible for parole.
During closing arguments Friday night, defense attorney Scott Layh argued prosecutors had absolutely no evidence Hoyt abused the child and instead were relying entirely upon posts Hoyt made on a pedophile website Layh fully admitted were horrendous, disgusting, despicable, nasty and ridiculous.
“He’s not here in front of you because of the website he was on or the things he posted,” Layh said. “I’m asking you to do something you won’t want to do, but it’s absolutely following the law and that is to find him not guilty.”
Layh told the jury there were several reasons to acquit his client. Not only was there a lack of physical evidence, but three witnesses testified the girl recanted and that she’d been given candy after telling authorities she’d been victimized, he said. In addition, witnesses said the girl’s grandmother and great grandmother have a history of making false allegations.
The defense attorney reminded the jurors the abnormality seen in the girl’s rectum by a sexual assault nurse examiner can be caused by other things besides sodomy. There were no tears or scarring seen in the girl’s vagina or anus despite testimony Hoyt is well-endowed.
The acts allegedly perpetrated on the girl would hurt, Layh said.
“No 4-year-old, 5-year-old, 6-year-old is going to want to see the guy’s who’s inflicting that kind of pain,” and yet everyone testified the child’s attitude toward Hoyt remained unchanged, Layh said. In fact, everyone testified the girl remains the same bubbly, laughing child she’s always been, he said.
Layh also reminded the jurors his client repeatedly asked for the child to undergo a second pelvic examination.
“Why? Because he knows he didn’t do this. Why else would an alleged perpetrator ask for that?” Layh said.
Without Hoyt’s internet posts, Layh told the jury they wouldn’t even be in the courtroom.
While he suspects the prosecutors will argue Hoyt’s posts were a confession, Layh said his client was just saying what would be considered “cool” on that particular website. His client has an unfortunate addiction to pornography, he said.
“I’m not in any way saying Dakota is a good person and he’s being vilified. What he wrote was nasty and gross, but we don’t live in a country where we put somebody in prison,” for writing such things or for something that could happen, Layh said.
During his closing argument, Assistant Ector County District Attorney William Prasher told the jurors Layh is correct. What Hoyt posted was a confession, he said before he read some of them out loud.
“I don’t want you to convict him because he’s going to do it in the future, but because he did it in the past,” Prasher said, his voice rising. “What did the defendant tell you (in those posts)? He’s bragging about it. He said ‘I do this,’ not that he thinks about doing this or that he wants to do this. He said ‘I do this’ and the thing is, this was months before all of this came out.”
On Thursday, Prasher had a Homeland Security special agent read post after post after post allegedly written by Hoyt on Rapey.Su from Oct. 1, 2020 to Dec. 1, 2020 when the federal government shut down the website.
Using sexually explicit and crude terms, StretchXWood2020 repeatedly asked for people to share child pornography with him. He also expressed positive views on sex with children, incest, gang rape, anal sex and men sexually assaulting their wives. He also bragged about the size of his penis and alleged he knew a 4-year-old with a voracious appetite for giving him oral sex.
Hoyt’s confession on the website is perhaps even more believable because “no law enforcement officers were beating it out of him,” Prasher said.
As for physical evidence of the abuse, the girl’s mother testified the child doesn’t have any of the medical conditions that cause the rectal abnormality seen by the sexual assault nurse examiner, Prasher said.
However, Prasher said the jury only has to believe Hoyt touched the girl with his penis, not that he penetrated her.
“If he tore her up, everyone would know and he’d be caught,” Prasher said. “He knows what to do and what not to do so he doesn’t get caught.”
