FL- Sex offender finally released

2-22-2009 Florida:

Florida Supreme Court rules he served his time, and much more

For nine years, William Todd Larimore told anyone who'd listen that he didn't belong behind bars.

The 50-year-old Jacksonville sex offender complained to guards, cops, reporters and the courts that he'd completed his sentence more than a decade ago. His complaints mostly fell on deaf ears.

But three weeks ago the Florida Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that Larimore was right all along. The justices ordered him released immediately from the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, where he was held the past four years.

"Ultimately what it boiled down to is Todd was in prison unlawfully," said former Assistant Public Defender Ward Metzger, who argued Larimore's appeal before the Supreme Court. "He spent years locked up unlawfully."

The court agreed with Metzger that because Larimore wasn't legally in state custody, state officials had no right in 2004 to commit him to the Arcadia center.

Metzger estimated the ruling will affect a handful of other men at the center, where hundreds of sex offenders are sent after completing their felony sentences under Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Attorney General's Office, which argued against Larimore's release, said the office respects the court's opinion.

The law is named for a boy killed by a sex offender who was released from prison after completing his sentence. It allows state officials to seek civil commitment of offenders completing their sentences on grounds that they need mental health treatment before they can be released into society.

Life on the outside

Now back in Jacksonville, Larimore is trying to readjust to life on the outside after spending most of the past two decades either in prison or at the Arcadia center following his 1991 guilty plea to two counts of lewd assault on a child younger than 16. He continues to register as a sex offender.

It's been tough going with no cash, no job and his body weakened by illness. He's living with relatives on Jacksonville's Northside. During his incarceration, he lost his mother, sister, daughter and former wife to death.

"Everybody I love is gone," he said Wednesday at his lawyers' office. "I can't get my family back. I can't get my life back. What do I ask for?"

Larimore was sentenced in 1991 to 15 years in prison and five years of probation. He said he told detectives at the time he didn't know if he committed the crimes because he was drinking heavily but couldn't imagine doing that to a child.

In 1998 Larimore was released from prison, his sentence considered complete because of "gain time." To reduce overcrowding, laws then allowed for sentences to be shortened as more and more time was served.

He began serving the probation, even though he believed it was illegal, and in 2000 was sent back to prison for violating probation by failing a drug test.

But the appeals courts said that shouldn't have happened.

"The law says he should have been time served when he went back to prison," said attorney Jonathan Zisser, who represents Larimore in private practice now and previously represented him in the Public Defender's Office. "He should have walked out of the courtroom."

Fighting through appeals

Larimore won that appeal representing himself in 2002, but state prison officials kept him incarcerated until 2004 by canceling his gain time. Larimore appealed again, and again won without a lawyer, with the 1st District Court of Appeal ruling the Department of Corrections wasn't authorized to do that.

But by then, the state had petitioned to commit him to the Arcadia center, and the courts refused to block that move. His appeal lingered for four years before last month's 34-page Supreme Court opinion, which said offenders have to be in legal custody when steps are taken to initiate civil commitment.

"Larimore's entire re-sentencing was unlawful," Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the majority. "... The entire statute is predicated on the inmate being in [legal] custody."

The goal, said attorney Donald Maciejewski, is getting the state to fix an operational error that kept Larimore locked up nine extra years. He and Zisser are representing him for free.

"We're not going to rest until Todd's got a full measure of justice," Maciejewski said. "It's like a plane crash. The FAA does everything it can to make sure it never happens again. The state should do the same thing." ..News Source.. by Paul Pinkham