Child Rapists Will Serve Minimum of 25 Years With Proposed Law

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) Utah does a good job of locking up child rapists, according to state officials. But conservative TV pundits and the general public are clamoring for Utah to guarantee a minimum 25-year sentence for those offenders. It's known as Jessica's Law and Governor Jon Huntsman says it's time:

"Utah must be known as a safe haven for children, not for sex offenders," says Huntsman. "Let this be a warning from today going forward, to all potential child sexual predators: We will not as a state accept anything short of a gold-standard in child predator laws, which is Jessica's Law."

Huntsman and legislative leaders say Jessica's Law has wide support among policy makers and the justice community in Utah. It is modeled after a Florida law named for Jessica Lunsford who was abducted, raped and murdered in 2005. Utah lawmakers have struggled to pass a 25-year mandatory penalty for sex offenses against children because the state's sentencing structure relies on ranges of sentence lengths, rather than minimums.

Critics of Jessica's Law say longer mandatory sentences discourage suspects from pleading guilty and can force child victims to testify in court. Representative Carl Wimmer says his bill addresses those issues:

"We have now created the ability for offenders to plead down to attempted rape of a child when the victim or parents don't want to testify," says Wimmer. "The offender can plead down to 15 years to life. This bill really creates the greatest flexibility and the harshest penalties possible, I think, anywhere in the country."

Convicted child rapists will get a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life in prison, instead of the current 15-year minimum. Attempted rape or sodomy of a child will jump from three years to a minimum of 15 years to life. The Board of Pardons and Parole will still determine the actual time served.

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