THANKS to Ms. Wright and her staff for their dutiful diligence in pursuit of child molesters!
An appellate court decision reinstated an Augusta man's sentence for a 2005 statutory rape conviction and required him to register as a sex offender.
In May, Superior Court Judge Duncan Wheale rescinded the sentence he had imposed on William Archer Stulb, 24, in December 2005 after a jury found Mr. Stulb guilty of statutory rape.
Mr. Stulb, formerly of the 2800 block of Lombardy Court, had been sentenced to a year in jail followed by nine years' probation, 300 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine. The law didn't require Mr. Stulb to register as a sex offender because of his age at the time of the offense. When the law changed in 2006, Mr. Stulb was required to register.
In response to a request from Mr. Stulb last year, Judge Wheale resentenced Mr. Stulb under the First Offender Act, which eliminated Mr. Stulb's requirement to register.
The district attorney's office appealed, saying the judge did not have the authority to resentence Mr. Stulb as a first offender because he had already been convicted of a felony.
The Georgia Court of Appeals agreed, ruling Monday that "a trial court is only authorized to grant first offender treatment before a defendant has been adjudicated guilty and sentenced."
Mr. Stulb is being held in the Glynn County Detention Center in Brunswick, Ga., without bond on a child molestation charge. He is accused of molesting an 11-year-old girl in Sea Island, Ga., on June 22.
A trial set for Monday in that case was postponed, according to the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office. No new date has been set.
Reach Valerie Rowell at 868-1222, ext. 110, or valerie.rowell@augustachronicle.com.
Comments
THANKS to Ms. Wright and her staff for their dutiful diligence in pursuit of child molesters!
dickworth1, his registration probably would not have prevented the incident as his offense was committed against a relative, whose parents supposedly helped convince Wheale to resentence Stulb under the first offender's act. I hope the Brunswick court sentences the little pervert to a long prison sentence and the inmates dole out his punishment every day.
ColCo i'm SURE you do not have all of your facts right. I hope God can forgive you for what you said, and I pray for all of the families involved, including Stulb.
Duncan Wheale is no longer on the bench. He retired.
Thank you JUSTUS4 for your "Woe is me, black man take" on this incident.
Seems as though the Stulb family paid off the wrong judge...and WHY did the DA appeal the case...oh the Lombardy address...
So Justus, how do you account for the fact that my stepcousin spent 20 years in prison- in San Quentin, no less- and he was white?
Justus - there are plenty of black registered sex offenders freely living in neighborhoods and not in prison. Do a search on the web and you'll see. Why must you put race in everything? It gets old.
prayer 2008, My facts are right and I'm sure God will forgive me for not caring how a child molester is treated in prison.
This is an example of another reason to NEVER cut a child molester any slack. It's ALWAYS the wrong thing to do. These people need to be isolated from society or salvaged for body parts and recycled.
For the record, if this person is sentenced to 20 yrs, he will do all 20 because, by law, there is no parole for his crime, where if someone is sentenced to 10 yrs for selling crack they would be paroled in 3 to 4 yrs - it's part of the system (unless it's a repeat offender). There are different parole stipulations for different crimes - this man's crime is a level 5 crime and Ga. law requires him to do 90% of it, but in his case, he'll do it all and will do very hard time to say the least.
I think we are all in the same car when it comes to repeat offenders. the question is, was the statutory rape conviction one of a barely 20ish and an almost 18ish, or a 20something and a maybe almost a teen. One is different than the other.
If there is someone who does not think child molestation is a crime, I am not speaking to or for them. My question is:
What is a 'sex offender' and who belongs on a registry for life? As it stands, that is anyone convicted of such a broad range of crimes that there are few in the nation who would not be on the registry if they had been 'caught'.
The simple fact is that most persons convicted of a sex offense do not re-offend. The more frightening fact is that people somehow feel safe with a registry and it has no effect on the rate of sex offenses. Face it people, over 80% of all offenses against children happen in the home and, as in this case, are committed by a relative or parent. These people knew this man and that he is a former offender. Maybe they should be on the registry too.
Kelly R Piercy
gasoem@gmail.com
http://www.gasorr.org/
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