PA- Sex offender fights long sentence

No matter what, sentences have to be proportional to the CRIME one is being sentenced for, and enhanced only by what those laws allow. This, like the Adam Walsh Act sentences, which this may have flowed from, are excessive and unconstitutional!

6-18-2008 Pennsylvania:

A convicted sex offender with a federal sex-crime record is the focus of a Cumberland County Court battle over a mandatory state sentencing law that could imprison him for the rest of his life.

The disagreement erupted Tuesday during sentencing for Bruce Paul Ward, 33, of Lower Allen Twp., when First Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating urged President Judge Edgar B. Bayley to impose a 50- to 100-year state prison term for two felony child pornography convictions.

"Some people just need to go to jail for a very long time," Keating said.

Bayley postponed Ward's sentencing after Deputy Public Defender Arla Waller argued that the mandatory sentencing law Keating invoked is unconstitutional.

That law violates the prohibition against cruel and usual punishment set by the U.S. and state constitutions, Waller argued. She said it might not even be applicable because of the timing of Ward's case.

Bayley called the sentencing law "draconian." He scheduled a July hearing to see if it should be imposed.

Waller said state officials told her the 18-month-old mandate has not been used against any convicted sex offender by any Pennsylvania court.

Keating was livid at the postponement.

"This is outrageous. It's completely a delay tactic," he said afterward. "If they [thought] this statute didn't apply, why didn't they bring it up before his trial?"

A county jury convicted Ward in March on two felony counts of possession of child pornography and 45 charges of possessing obscene materials.

Ward was arrested in May 2006 on a tip from a minister who reported seeing photographs of teenage girls in provocative poses in Ward's Rana Villa Avenue home. The pastor said he also saw a 13-year-old girl arrive at the home for Ward to photograph, police said.

Authorities said videos of girls having sex and stripping were taken from Ward's home. Sex acts involving people and animals were depicted on other materials, Keating said.

He said Ward also had a "rape kit" that contained equipment for abducting and rendering victims helpless. Keating said Ward told authorities he sometimes used the alias "Jeffrey Dahmer," the name of the late cannibalistic serial killer who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.

When arrested in 2006, Ward was a registered sex offender.

In 2001, he pleaded guilty to a federal child porn possession charge and was sentenced to 27 months in prison, followed by two years of probation, Keating said.

Keating insisted that Ward's federal sentence should automatically trigger the state sentencing mandate.

Waller disputed that, cited her constitutional argument and claimed the sentencing law can't be applied to Ward because it didn't take effect until January 2007, seven months after his arrest.

Ward remains free on bail. ..News Source.. by MATT MILLER