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  • 2018-02-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Judge Cut a Pedophile’s Prison Term Because He Claimed a 3-Year-Old ‘Asked’ to Be Raped? (en)
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  • In December 2014, Kevin Jonas Rojano-Nieto was convicted of one felony count of sexual intercourse or sodomy of a child 10 years or younger, and one felony count of lewd acts upon a child under the age of 14. The events in Santa Ana, Calif., that led to his conviction were described as follows, per local broadcaster ABC7: Rojano-Nieto was convicted, yet controversy arose in the sentencing phase because of a state mandate for severe punishments for sex offenders. In 2006, 70 percent of California voters approved Proposition 83 to increase penalties for sex offenses, which meant Rojano-Nieto's crime carried a mandatory 25-years-to-life sentence, according to The Orange County Register. However, judge Marc Kelly felt that imposing the mandatory sentence would have been tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment, in part because Rojano-Nieto almost immediately stopped assaulting the toddler. Kelly sentenced Rojano-Nieto to ten years in prison instead. The Register reports: Unfortunately, the notorious Your News Wire fake news site opted to turn this tragic story into clickbait, publishing a (mostly accurate) summary of the case under the false headline Judge Cuts Pedophile’s Prison Term Claiming 3-Yr-Old ‘Asked’ to Be Raped, and including the following fabricated statement in the middle of their article: This false notion that the defendant claimed the victim asked me to do it, and that the judge backed his claim, appeared nowhere in any reporting on the case, nor in the judge's sentencing analysis. Rather, the judge held that he was recommending a lesser sentence because Rojano-Nieto had acted on a momentary impulse, had promptly recognized its wrongfulness, and had stopped almost immediately: Kelly's decision sparked protests and nationwide calls for him to be removed from the bench, and for his sentence ruling to be overturned. In a unanimous decision, the 4th District Court of Appeal held that there was nothing cruel or unusual about imposing the mandatory sentence in Rojano-Nieto’s case because his offense was not significantly different from other cases of sodomy on a child under 10. The appellate court ordered that Rojano-Nieto be returned to Orange County to be re-sentenced, as the prosecution had argued he should be: If Rojano-Nieto had claimed his 3-year-old victim had asked to be raped, that element would surely have been cited by the prosecution as a factor supporting a harsher sentence. But again, no such claim was mentioned anywhere in their brief to the court. (en)
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