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Judge, defender share blame for harsh sentence

Public Defender Howard "Skip" Babb has said his office will stop talking to the newspapers about the William Thornton IV sentencing travesty after a week of inflammatory rhetoric and accusations made against the judge in the case.

That is a sensible strategy because the Public Defender's Office should be focusing all its energies on trying to correct a grave injustice it helped create for its client.

Thornton is the 18-year-old from Sumter County who pleaded no contest to two charges of vehicular homicide stemming from an accident in December that left two people dead in Citrus County. Brandon L. Mushlit, 25, and Sara Jo Williams, 23, died after they were thrown from a vehicle that struck the car Thornton was driving.

The details of the case and the draconian sentence Thornton received have roiled the community, sparking accusations of racial prejudice against Circuit Judge Ric Howard and calls for the Hernando County resident's removal not just from this case but from the bench.

The Public Defender's Office was correct in asking Howard to recuse himself from any subsequent proceedings involving Thornton, and the judge should have granted the motion.

The threshold for determining whether such a motion is legally sufficient is not the veracity of the accusation but whether a reasonable person would believe he or she would not receive a fair hearing if the accusation were true.

If a reasonable person were told that the judge referenced the defendant's father's criminal history, which was totally irrelevant to the case before him, that person might question the judge's mind-set and intentions.

When the judge pointed out that he had sent the defendant's father to prison for 30 years before pronouncing the same sentence on his son, a reasonable person could infer a bias on the judge's part and wonder whether the judge was laying the sins of the father upon the son.

Granting the recusal would have raised hopes that the merits of the case and of the sentence meted out might get a fair rehearing, as justice and decency compel.

A second request by the Public Defender's Office, to allow Thornton to withdraw his no-contest pleas and set the case for trial, would put that process in motion and should be granted immediately. Perhaps then some of the significant factors that Howard seemed to ignore will be considered. Among them:

That Mushlit had a blood-alcohol level of 0.102 or 0.112, well over the limit at which Florida law presumes a person to be drunk, when he struck Thornton's car. By contrast, Thornton had neither alcohol nor drugs in his system.

That neither Mushlit nor Williams was wearing a seat belt, which contributed to their being thrown from their vehicle.

That Thornton, who was speeding and driving without a license, unsuccessfully used the brakes and the emergency brake in the unfamiliar car to stop the vehicle after it crested a hill and approached the intersection.

That subsequent to the accident, Citrus County workers installed a sign on the road Thornton was driving that warns drivers of the stop sign ahead.

All of these potentially mitigating factors should have been considered at Thornton's Sept. 16 sentencing. They were not.

Even more disturbing, Howard rejected sentencing suggestions that were much more appropriate to the crime.

The state Department of Corrections, after investigating the case, recommended that Thornton be sentenced to two years of community control followed by two years of probation. The Department of Juvenile Justice recommended two years in a juvenile detention facility.

A representative from a state agency said Thornton - who attended high school, had no criminal record and worked 35 hours a week washing trucks at a truck stop - would be an ideal candidate for a corrections program his agency operates.

Instead, Thornton received two 15-year terms in adult prison, to be served consecutively. Given the rampant incidence of AIDS in prison, and Thornton's age, the sentence is tantamount to a death decree.

It is important to keep in mind Thornton may well have avoided his predicament had he received competent legal representation from the Public Defender's Office.

Thornton said he was advised by his attorney at the time to plead no contest and to seek the mercy of the court at sentencing. His attorney, he said, told him that he would receive a term in line with the recommendations of the state agencies.

The Public Defender's Office, however, has had extensive dealings with Howard and must be familiar with his record of handing down maximum sentences. To allow a young man to walk blindly into that lion's den was irresponsible.

The office then compounded the problem by making unsubstantiated and reckless accusations against Howard, specifically that the judge was racially biased in his sentencing of Thornton, who is black.

There is no evidence to support such a charge, and the public defender was right to apologize immediately for that insult.

The State Attorney's Office opposes a plea withdrawal, saying that Thornton was apprised of the potential consequences of his plea and that he cannot change his plea simply because he doesn't like the outcome.

This argument, while legally sound, is morally flawed. The facts of this case simply do not warrant the maximum penalty Thornton received. He has no prior record, there was no intention to commit a crime, there was culpability on the part of others, the judge exhibited questionable behavior, and Thornton was ill-served and misled by his attorneys.

That Thornton committed several terrible mistakes that night that left two people dead is incontrovertible; that he is responsible for his actions, and their consequences, is unquestioned; that the families of the victims in this tragedy are due the community's compassion for their inestimable loss is indisputable.

And it is abundantly clear that the legal system, particularly the Public Defender's Office, failed Thornton.

Now is the time for the judge, prosecutors and defenders to do what is necessary to bring belated justice to this case.

[Last modified October 3, 2005, 01:15:16]