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Lee takes plea deal in firearm charge

Already serving 33 years, some of it related to a car chase, Tommy Lee will now move from the county jail to state prison.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published April 29, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Tommy Lee, brazen, charming and notorious, pleaded no contest Friday afternoon to possession of a firearm by a felon to wrap up the last of his latest list of criminal cases.

Lee, 34, one of the more frequent, most widely known felons in recent Hernando County history, was sentenced by Circuit Judge Stephen Rushing to slightly more than eight years in state prison. The sentence will run concurrent with the 33 years he got in separate sentencing hearings last summer and last month.

Friday was a relative formality, but it brought to an end, at least for now, Lee's lengthy run of lawlessness. Lee made news just this month at the county jail with a thwarted escape plot that involved a hacksaw, a sub sandwich and a sweet-talked female jail guard.

He soon will be transferred from the county jail to a more long-term state prison.

"I would imagine the jail wants him out of there," prosecutor Don Barbee said on Friday.

Lee grew up in south Brooksville, has a rap sheet with more than 30 felony convictions and has been in and out of prison since he was 16. He appeared in court on Friday wearing handcuffs, a red jail jumpsuit and silver chains around his waist and ankles.

In the last year and a half or so in the county jail, he tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists with a piece of plastic, punched two inmates and a corrections officer, flooded his cell and smashed its windows with a broomstick.

He was found guilty in February of aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer and felony fleeing. Those charges came from a car chase in November 2004 in which authorities said he pointed a gun at a sheriff's deputy. The firearm charge stems from that incident. Rushing sentenced him to 25 years on top of the eight and change he got last August for different charges.

Over the course of his many dates in court over the last year-plus, Lee compared himself to Jesus Christ, saying he was "ready to suffer," demanded a bench trial against the advice of public defender Devon Sharkey, testified in his own defense and gave a highly entertaining version of the car chase. Even Rushing called him a "very engaging person" - then rendered a quick guilty verdict.

This month, in the latest twist to the Tommy Lee story, he persuaded a married, 22-year-old corrections officer to pack her car with her bags and her 2-year-old son and try to smuggle a saw blade in a sandwich into the jail. Officials at the jail and the Sheriff's Office found a sexually explicit letter and also a record of 76 phone calls Lee had made to the woman's home since March.

Barbee said Friday no charges were pending on that matter.

That left the one final plea. It didn't take long.

"Anything else?" Rushing asked him.

Lee shook his head. He shuffled over to the bailiff and was fingerprinted and taken away.

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

[Last modified April 29, 2006, 01:17:17]