Man Sentenced to 25 Years for Lewd Acts

VAN NUYS — An ex-convict who sucked the toe of a friend’s 10-year-old daughter four days after he was paroled was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years to life in prison.

Peter Darius Cornett, 41, with previous convictions including kidnapping, rape and robbery, last month was convicted by a jury of committing lewd acts on a child under 14.

Under the sentence handed down by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard G. Kolostian, Cornett would not be eligible for parole before 2019.

The three-strikes law applied in Cornett’s case. Kolostian said the defendant was “the type of person the law was designed for.” Four days before Cornett molested the little girl as she slept, he was paroled from state prison. He had come to stay at the residence at her mother’s invitation, court records show. In a statement to police, Cornett admitted he had consumed three 16-ounce beers the night of the incident, Dec. 15, 1996.

“Crimes like this are often committed without witnesses,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Turkat of the Sex Crimes, Child Abuse and Domestic Crimes Unit. “But this verdict and this sentence lend credence and credibility to cases involving children.”

At trial last month, the girl testified that she awoke to find the defendant in her bed and naked. She said she ran from Cornett and locked herself in a bathroom after he tried to take off her pajama bottoms and licked her big toe.

In court Wednesday, Deputy Public Defender Jonathan Petrak argued for leniency, contending that Cornett’s most serious prior offenses had occurred in 1976, “a generation ago.”