Gruesome Tale: Man Convicted of Raping and Torturing Disabled Sister

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP/THE BLAZE) — A New York man was convicted Wednesday of raping and scalding his mentally disabled half-sister before their mother suffocated her last year.

The Erie County jury deliberated about 4 hours before finding 32-year-old Luke Wright guilty on all 10 criminal counts.

Via WIVB is television coverage of the trial:

During a weeklong trial in Buffalo, jurors heard how Wright and his mother kept 23-year-old Laura Cummings tied to a chair for much of the last two months of her life, often with a hood over her head because Wright said her staring bothered him. Cummings has been described as having the mental capacity of a preteen.

Here is a picture of her:

Relying on Wright's own statements to police after Cummings' January 2010 death, prosecutors described how he severely burned her face with a pot of boiling water, scalded her buttocks in a bathtub, regularly raped her and forcibly sodomized her with a broomstick.

He faces up to life in prison when he's sentenced.

Eva Cummings, the mother of Wright and the victim, pleaded guilty in October to second-degree murder for killing her daughter in their North Collins home, outside Buffalo, and is in prison.

Wright's lawyer had tried to convince jurors Wright wasn't responsible, telling them he's been mentally retarded since birth, was left brain-damaged by childhood beatings with bricks and baseball bats, and was also a victim of his mother, whom he called "the personification of evil."

"No mother lived in that home," attorney John Nuchereno said during closing arguments Tuesday. "A devil lived in that house and had for years and years."

Nuchereno questioned the reliability of Wright's numerous statements to police, suggesting he confessed to things he didn't do without fully understanding his legal situation. Wright's IQ of 52 puts him in the range of mild mental disability. Average IQ scores range from 85 to 115.

But prosecutor Thomas Finnerty said Wright's upbringing was not an excuse and said jailhouse recordings of phone calls proved he fully understood that what he had done was wrong

"A lot of people have been dealt a lousy hand, but people are not captive to their histories," Finnerty said. "It was his choices, his actions that made Laura Cummings a tortured prisoner in her own home."