LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County circuit judge balked at approving a plea bargain Thursday for a Beebe man who said that as a teenager he molested a 6-year-old, after hearing that the girl’s family didn’t like the plea arrangement.
Judge Wendell Griffen gave prosecutors and defense attorneys a week to prepare to persuade him that he should give 20-year old Dakota Logen Ru-nnel a sentence of probation instead of prison time.
“Educate me,” Griffen told deputy prosecutor Emily Abbott and defense attorney Sharon Kiel. “The court needs to have a confidence level that any sentence it imposes is fair.”
Griffen, a former Arkansas appeals court judge who took the circuit bench in January, said he was sensitive to the necessity of plea agreements, particularly in cases like this one where the child accuser could be “traumatized” by the “very, very painful experience” of having to testify. But Griffen said he needed to make sure that prosecutors were recommending an appropriate punishment, since the responsibility of imposing the sentence is his alone.
“Every category of crime has its particular challenges, particularly sex crimes where the victim is of tender years,” he said. “The first concern, even in negotiated pleas, is that the judge must be comfortable that the punishment matches the offense.”
Ru-nnel’s guilty plea Thursday to second-degree sexual assault, reduced from a rape charge, in exchange for six years on probation was to have ended 18 months of legal proceedings that began with Ru-nnel’s arrest in August 2009, six weeks before his 18th birthday.
Those proceedings included three months in juvenile court before Judge Wiley Branton, who, in a rare move, transferred the case to adult court in November 2009.
The difference in charges is that second-degree sexual assault involves contact and carries a maximum penalty of20 years, while rape involves sexual penetration and carries a 40-year maximum for teen offenders.
Abbott didn’t say why prosecutors offered probation in the case but told the judge that the decision to recommend that sentence involved “complex issues” that had not been revealed.
Griffen offered Ru-nnel an opportunity to withdraw the guilty plea Thursday, which Kiel declined. Once a guilty plea is accepted, the judge is not bound by any agreement between the prosecution and defense, but can impose whatever punishment is available under the law. It’s a penalty that cannot be appealed, except under very limited circumstances.
The decision sparked a clash between Abbott and Kiel over what kind of evidence would be presented at the Feb. 24 hearing. Abbott said testimony from the girl’s grandmother should be enough, but Kiel told the judge that she wanted the girl, now 8, and her mother to testify, something that Abbott opposed since they now live out of state.
She said Ru-nnel was at the Park Apartments in Maumelle, playing with children on a playground and giving them piggyback rides when he singled out the 6-year-old girl.
As part of his guilty plea, and at the judge’s request, Ru-nnel recounted what he’d done.
“I had the little girl touch my penis with her mouth,” he said.
Terms of his proposed probation would include registering as a sex offender, undergoing sex-offender counseling, paying a $750 fine and spending four months in jail.
Kiel told the judge that the crime was a one-of-a-kind encounter and that Ru-nnel hoped his guilty plea would help the girl and her family heal.
“He apologizes profusely for the anguish and pain ... his conduct has caused,” she said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/18/2011