Tougher sex-crime penalties sought

GOP candidate for Va. attorney general wants 'two-strikes' exception

BY MICHAEL HARDY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
  
Aug 19, 2005

Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican running for the job of state attorney general, proposed yesterday that criminals be imprisoned for at least 25 years for committing major sex offenses against children under the age of 13.

Additionally, predators convicted of rape, sodomy or object penetration would later face up to a lifetime of monitoring under a global positioning system.

A second offense would require the predators to spend life behind bars, he said.

"Two strikes and you're out!" said McDonnell of the proposed special exception to the state's three-time-loser laws.

A former prosecutor and state delegate from Virginia Beach, McDonnell argued that the additional punishment would make Virginia's sex-offender statutes among the toughest in the nation.

"These criminals cannot be rehabilitated and are likely to commit new crimes," he said.

McDonnell said state statistics show that one in three such criminals will commit another crime within five years of release from prison.

"It's fairly chilling. . . . The hopes for rehabilitation are almost nil," he said.

His proposal, crafted by a Crime Commission panel on which he serves, also is needed because of the vulnerability of the victims. The current Virginia law committing a few sexually violent predators to special facilities isn't enough, he said.

"We need to be tougher on child predators," he said of the plan, which was modeled on a Florida law passed after a notorious case there.

McDonnell said his plan is "cheaper, it's fairer and it's more effective" to deal with violent sexual predators.

The proposals would require approval of the General Assembly next winter to become law.

Under the state's current sentencing structure, judges can impose sentences of five years to life for rape, sodomy or object penetration. In practice, median sentences have been 12 years in prison, he said. The maximum penalty would remain a life sentence for a first-time offender.

McDonnell told reporters that his latest series of proposals are more comprehensive and innovative than those of Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, the Bath County Democrat who is running against McDonnell in the Nov. 8 election.

But Peter Jackson, the chief spokesman for Deeds, countered yesterday that Deeds has been a leader in sex-offender legislation in the General Assembly.

"Creigh Deeds has been out front on this issue since 1994," Jackson said. "He introduced Megan's Law [creating a sex-offender registry] and Amber Alert" to track down missing children.

As an example of the problem in Virginia, McDonnell pointed to the recent case of Lorenzo Townes in Richmond. On July 13, Townes, 49, who had spent most of the past 32 years in prison for a series of crimes, was arrested on charges of forcible sodomy, abduction and attempted rape of a 13-year-old North Side girl.

Originally convicted in 1973 for the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Campbell County, Townes was released from a state treatment center just four months before the recent charges.

McDonnell said that since 2003, about 927 sex offenders have been eligible for postsentence commitment to a secure treatment center but that only 14 have been sent there.

There is a dramatic difference between the costs of criminal and civil confinement. It costs Virginia taxpayers $23,000 a year to imprison a felon, compared with about $118,000 annually for a year of civil confinement with expansive treatment, he said.

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