At the final hour, as Republican legislators had feared, a bill to give long sentences to sex criminals who rape and molest minors failed to win passage.
The package of measures for sex offenders was a top priority for legislative leaders, the governor and the attorney general, but it also included a 25-year minimum sentence for sex crimes against youngsters. The provision is often called Jessica?s law, a Florida statute enacted last year after the abduction, molestation and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford by a known sex offender who lived near her.
The stiff sentence was not part of the leadership package, but was sponsored by House Republicans. Yet it was added on the floor of the House by Democratic Whip Anthony Brown, Mayor Martin O?Malley?s running mate in his campaign for governor.
Senate Republicans wanted to add the Jessica?s Law provision to the Senate version of the bill, but it was resisted by committee leaders, including Sen. Brian Frosh, D-Montgomery, chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee. He generally opposes mandatory minimum sentences that take discretion away from judges, as does his counterpart in the House, Del. Joseph Vallario.
“It?s a very complex issue presented in a 10-second soundbite,” Frosh said Tuesday. He said the House bill would have required a judge to sentence a 16-year-old who had consenting oral sex with a 12-year-old to jail until he was 41 years old.
Sen. Andrew Harris, GOP whip, saw the maneuvers as an attempt to “pass a watered-down version of the bill or kill it entirely.”
Frosh said he and Brown had quickly agreed to a compromise to give the 25-year sentence to anyone 18 or older convicted of first-degree rape, but the bill as amended was not ready to vote on until 12:15 a.m., 15 minutes too late to win passage.
