originally posted 8/17/2009
My husband and I are victims of the Commonwealth. At the age of 15-16 he was accused of rape by a classmate whose family filed charges but never followed through in court. The case was dropped due to the victim’s failure to appear. This followed him approximately two years later when another offense was committed in our area and he was immediately arrested. A young, single mother of three boys, with no legal or moral support at the time, was coerced by detectives in hopes of affording her middle son a chance in court.
My husband was was charged, convicted and sentenced to 37 years. Seven years to be served, 10 years suspended sentence and 20 years on probation.
With my lack of full understanding of the law it would stand to reason that the Grandfather Law would be applicable to his recent circumstance; he was subject to sentencing guidelines before 1995. My husband was released in 1992 to serve 20 years probation. Thereafter he remained on supervised probation, this before Megan’s Law which in and of it self mimics
double jeopardy. In light of the Grandfather Law, the fact that there are no details of the 1985 trial on record due to the City of Hampton Courts’ warehouse does not house documents longer than 10 years. Especially before the computer era, the archives for the City of Hampton Courts, Juvenile, Criminal, Domestic or otherwise no longer exist prior to 1989. In essence, there are no details about my husband’s past, yet this suffocates our future. My husband and I are scrutinized for events that no longer have or had supporting evidence. We are now being victimized yet again through an office designated to supervise my husband, the City of Hampton Parole/Probation Office, Probation Officer RDF. With no preexisting or present evidence regarding the 1985 case, what drives him in pursuit of my husband is a mystery.
Officer RDF could not have been much more than a boy himself at the time of my husband’s conviction. If no court record exists, and juvenile records are sealed, what does Mr. F think he knows about my husband that makes him so adamant about our demise? It appears as though this person has taken a negative, personal, non-professional campaign against my husband. In Dec. 2008, Mr. F violated my husband on a failure to report contact with an officer due to a vehicle malfunction violation ticket. That Tuesday, as every Tuesday since May 2007 my husband reported to Mr. F, but on this Tuesday he took my husband into custody for failure to communicate.
Long story short, my husband is still detained, in ill health due to lack of proper diet in the Hampton City Jail, and he has a cold and is genetically predisposed to diabetes. We have to acquiesce, because of the lack of proper representation from the Commonwealth Public Defenders officers, with whom I have communicated my concerns on more than one occasion. We have no
financial means to support our cause leaving us to the Commonwealth’s
mercies. This issue is much deeper than it may appear. We are in a “better late than never” situation as we have been patiently waiting for the proper attention from the Public Defenders Office to follow through and properly prepare for this case.