Attorney in Chester County rape case wants charges dismissed

WEST CHESTER — Jury selection in the case of a former Philadelphia man who is accused of raping a Parkesburg teenager in his automobile is scheduled to begin this week, but not before the judge overseeing the trial deals with pre-trial motions, including a bid to have the charges dismissed.

Earlier this month, the attorney for defendant Ameer Sutton-Best asked Common Pleas Court Judge Alita Rovito to throw out the charges against her client because she said a gap in time between when the alleged assault took place and his arrest some months later had violated his right to a speedy trial.

Sutton-Best is charged with rape, sexual assault, statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, institutional sexual assault by a sports official and related counts. He has been held in Chester County Prison since his arrest in the summer of 2022. In addition to assaulting the girl, he allegedly solicited other youths to send him sexually explicit photos by text.

Defense attorney Melissa McCafferty of Media said that the girl who is the alleged victim in the case had not immediately reported the assault to anyone, and had even denied that it occurred when initially confronted by a staff member at The Parkesburg Point, where Sutton-Best served as a volunteer basketball coach in the summer of 2022.

McCafferty also alleges that the girl, who was 13 at the time, also denied that anything had occurred between Sutton-Best and her to one of her peers, as well as to Sutton-Best’s then-fiancee. It was not until a person from the youth club, who is a mandated sexual assault reporter, notified authorities that the girl told anyone that she had been assaulted, McCafferty said in her motion to dismiss.

She was interviewed in August 2022 by Chester County Detective Ben Martin of the D.A.’s Child Abuse Unit, at which time she reported that she had been sexually assaulted inside his vehicle while it was parked at a parking lot in Parkesburg sometime around July 2022.

But McCafferty said that her story was uncorroborated and that police waited until October to arrest and charge Sutton-Best, a “protracted delay” caused by the girl’s “tardy report.” She said the girl had been unable to specify exactly when the alleged assault occurred, saying only that it was in June or July 2022. (Sutton-Best was actually arrested and charged  on Sept. 14, 2022.)

Sutton-Best, she said, “has been severely prejudiced by complainant’s unbelievable inability to recognize when the traumatic event of an alleged ‘forced rape’ occurred. This prejudice was then compounded by the subsequent failure of law enforcement authorities to act promptly and with due diligence to conduct an independent, more thorough investigation to make that determination.”

She asked that the charges be dismissed because the the delay in Sutton-Best’s arrest and the girl’s inability to give a specific date for the alleged assault.

First Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien, who is prosecuting the case, did not respond to the motion to dismiss in a court filing but is expected to oppose it during arguments on Monday. McCafferty, indeed, faces an uphill battle on those claims. Victims of sexual assault, especially youthful ones, frequently take time before reporting the assaults, even years. They also can have trouble recalling the exact date an assault took place.

Sutton-Best’s arrest led to the news that he had been allowed to serve as a volunteer at The Point, a popular youth spot in Parkesburg, despite having been convicted of an infamous murder when he was a teenager living in Philadelphia.

Sutton-Best had been incarcerated in the state prison at Pine Grove for more than 12 years after he was sentenced to prison by a Philadelphia judge in October 2009 for the killing of a Philadelphia man who was set upon by a group of teenagers skipping school in the city in an unprovoked attack as he walked along a subway platform near City Hall.

Sutton-Best, or Ameer Leon Best as he was then known, was convicted at trial in Common Pleas Court of third-degree murder and conspiracy in the death of 36-year-old Sean Conroy, a store manager at a Starbucks Coffee shop in the city who grew up in Delaware County. Sutton-Best was 17 years old at the time of the crime.

He was released in 2021. The jury, if selected, will not likely hear about that past criminal history.

On Sept. 14, 2022, he was arrested and charged with forcing the 13-year-old girl into having sex with him in the backseat of his SUV in a parking lot in the borough. The girl, who told police she knew him as a basketball coach at The Parkesburg Point Youth Center, told him to stop and tried to push him away but was unsuccessful, she told investigators during an interview in August, a few weeks after the alleged attack.

Sutton-Best, 31, had reportedly been trying to contact other young girls over the summer and induce them to have sex with them, sending them texts and in one instance asking a girl to send him nude photos. He also is accused of sending pornography to a young boy who was friends with the alleged rape victim, whose number he had given to Sutton-Best.

In a motion she filed this month, O’Brien has asked for permission to use the testimony of county detectives who interviewed both the girl who said she was raped, and other youths who were allegedly in contact with Sutton-Best around that time.

The mother of the young girl who accused Sutton-Best of raping her has filed a lawsuit against The Point for not properly supervising his conduct around youths at the center.

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.