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Molesters face more prison time

Not only would a bill double and sometimes triple sentences, but it also calls for lifetime monitoring upon release.

By MATTHEW WAITE
Published April 26, 2005

The Jessica Lunsford Act, awaiting Gov. Jeb Bush's signature, is the work of legislators outraged by the killing of a girl and committed to getting tough on child molesters.

How tough? At a minimum, three times as tough as the average sentence now handed to child molesters in Florida.

The act places a 25-year minimum prison term on anyone convicted of molesting a child younger than 12 - and allows a maximum sentence of life. The mandatory minimum is triple the average sentence length that prisoners convicted of the same crime are serving now in Florida prisons, corrections department data shows.

If a defendant doesn't want to roll the dice on a trial - and defense attorneys interviewed said plea bargains likely will increase because of the law - the prison time risk probably doubles.

"A 15-year prison sentence is a wonderful offer compared to life," said defense lawyer Rick Terrana of Tampa. "If you're standing in the defendant's shoes, it isn't that wonderful."

And, according to legislators, that's largely the point.

The act stems from the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Citrus County. John E. Couey, a convicted sex offender, has been charged in her death.

The effort to enact stricter penalties on sex offenders was well under way when another girl, Sarah Lunde, 13, of Hillsborough County, was found dead and another sex offender, 36-year-old David Onstott, was accused of the crime.

The bill combines longer prison terms with several efforts to monitor sex offenders released from prison.

Anyone convicted of molesting a child younger than 12 under the new law will be monitored for life by a global positioning system if released from prison. Current sex offenders who violate their probation also face jail or extended GPS monitoring under the act. Had the law been in effect in 1991, when Couey molested a 5-year-old girl, he would have been subject to its 25-year minimum sentence and lifetime monitoring.

One prosecutor thinks the monitoring provisions actually might make some defendants more willing to risk the life prison sentence they could get at trial.

"I've had plenty of experiences where people just don't want to be on house arrest or on community control and they fear wearing the ankle monitoring," said Hillsborough prosecutor Mike Sinacore.

Because of its tough provisions, the act does give the state more leverage in plea bargain negotiations, Sinacore said.

But he added, "My fear is that defendants are going to be more inclined to fight the charges given the lifetime monitoring. Because that is something that nobody would want to live with for the rest of their life and would be more inclined to gamble than to accept lifetime monitors. No one likes to have their privacy monitored so closely."

Effects on the criminal justice system because of the new law are unlikely to be swift or very large, lawyers said.

"Every time the Legislature passes a law that appears a lot tougher than the one before, these kinds of questions come up," Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe said. "The system adjusts and you move on. You pursue the cases and let the chips fall where they may.

"The sky has never fallen," he said. "People go to jail, and they can't hurt anyone while they're there. I don't think there will be a big impact. There will be some, no question."

The Florida Department of Corrections doesn't expect to feel an impact for at least three years.

Even then, the impact won't be large, DOC spokesman Sterling Ivy said.

In February, there were 83,535 inmates in Florida Department of Corrections facilities, department databases showed. Of those, there were 191 inmates sentenced for a single crime - lewd and lascivious molestation of a child younger than 12. On average, they were sentenced to 8.4 years in prison and all were sentenced after 1999, when penalties were increased for molestation cases.

Of the 502 inmates who had lewd and lascivious molestation charges somewhere in their criminal histories and weren't sentenced to life, they were serving an average of 12 years. Fifty inmates once convicted of molesting children were serving life sentences.

A bigger impact, Ivy said, will be the offenders on GPS monitoring. The department estimates that in three years, as many as 1,700 people will be monitored by GPS.

The largest impact falls on defendants accused of molesting children.

"It raises the stakes for the defense, if they want to roll the dice and go to trial ... if they lose, they go to (prison for) 25 years to life," said Tim Hessinger, who for eight years prosecuted sex abuse cases in Pinellas County before going into private practice. "That's huge for the defense."

[Last modified April 26, 2005, 01:04:06]