Two men convicted in separate and unrelated cases of raping children have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in Criminal Court, Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich said on Sept. 12.
Rodney Miller, 48, was sentenced to 50 years in prison with no parole by Judge James Lammey Jr. for his convictions last month of rape of a child, aggravated battery and aggravated statutory rape. He was convicted of having an ongoing relationship with the daughter of a family friend in Cordova beginning when she was 11.
The relationship was discovered in December of 2016 when the girl left her cell phone at home and her mother discovered sexually explicit text messages on the phone from Miller. The messages included suggestions about where they should have sex next.
When the mother confronted her daughter, she revealed that Miller had been having sex with her for the past six months and had been touching her sexually for a year prior to that.
The case was handled by Assistant District Attorneys Lessie Rainey and Dru Carpenter of the DA’s Special Victims Unit (SVU), which prosecutes cases of child sexual abuse and severe physical abuse of child victims; rape and aggravated rape of adult victims, and abuse of elderly and vulnerable adults. SVU reviews child-victim cases with Shelby County’s multi-agency Child Protection Investigative Team.
In another case, Judge W. Mark Ward sentenced Quintin Brittenum, age 54, to 55 years in prison without the possibility for parole on his convictions this summer of rape of a child and two counts of aggravated sexual battery. He is a prior sex offender.
In June he was convicted of sexually assaulting two young sisters in 2015 in Frayser, who then were ages 7 and 9. In a 1994 case, Brittenum was convicted of aggravated sexual battery and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The current case was handled by Assistant District Attorney Devon Lepeard of the SVU.
