Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Teen in steroids case avoids jail

After pleading guilty, he is sentenced as a youthful offender to two years of house arrest and four years of probation.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published January 27, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - The former Central High School student who got caught last May with a stash of steroids he had imported from Thailand pleaded guilty Thursday.

James Matthew "Jimmy" Hutchinson, 18, was sentenced by Circuit Judge Jack Springstead to two years of house arrest and four years of probation.

Hutchinson, who won't turn 19 until next month and lives with his mother at 9400 Fox Hollow Lane in the Glen Lakes community north of Weeki Wachee, had no prior criminal record. He was sentenced as a youthful offender.

Even as a youthful offender, though, he could have gotten six years in prison, Assistant State Attorney Bill Catto said. Catto asked for three.

"He was rolling the dice," he said, "but it worked out for him."

"It wasn't going to get much better than this," said Jeff Cario, the Spring Hill lawyer who represented Hutchinson. "But I think this is what was deserved in this case. This is what the youthful offender statute is designed for."

Hutchinson was a member of Central's golf and bowling teams in the fall of 2004. But he stopped going to school in early 2005. He was recognized in the school's yearbook as one of two students "suffering the worst bout of senioritis."

In May, he was arrested after authorities searched the home on Fox Hollow Lane and found 3,000 tablets of two synthetic compounds, eight vials of liquid testosterone and other assorted drugs, according to a Hernando County Sheriff's Office report. The search involved agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detectives from the sheriff's vice and narcotics unit.

Hutchinson admitted buying the steroids and having them mailed to him from Thailand, an arrest report said.

"It was not a huge operation," sheriff's spokesman Capt. Alan Arick said at the time. "It was just a matter of customs officers routinely inspecting packages and finding the steroids."

Authorities said there was no evidence he was distributing the steroids to other students at Central or any other school in Hernando County.

"He was caught red-handed," Cario said Thursday afternoon. "It was what it was. From that point on, it was just a matter of mitigating it."

Under the guidelines of his house arrest, Hutchinson can leave his home only for work, school or doctor's visits, Catto said.

The sentence does not allow for the possibility of early termination.

Any probation violation almost certainly will put Hutchinson in jail.

On Thursday, before his sentencing, he was sitting on a bench outside the courtroom and was asked if he wanted to comment on his case. "I'd prefer not to," he said.

"If the kid ends up making it, it's a good thing," Catto said of the sentence. "Then perhaps he was worthy of the chance. But that remains to be seen."

"It was just a stupid, get-rich-quick scheme that young, naive people can get involved in," Cario said. "He understands that it was wrong. And he understands that this is the break of a lifetime."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified January 27, 2006, 01:21:16]