Jacksonville Prosecutors try to reduce woman's extraordinary sentence

A Jacksonville woman who recently pled to 8 separate worthless check charges was sentenced to 8 consecutive sentences for a total of 24 years. The defendant, and her attorney, expected a concurrent sentences. An article in the Florida Times Union today discusses the case in some detail and to Angela Corey’s credit she states “we may have made a mistake,” Corey told the Times Union.

There is an increasing number of worthless check cases that are being prosecuted primarily as a result of the economy and it will be interesting to watch the trend locally as to how aggressively the State Attorney’s Office prosecutes these matters.

With an economy that is failing, it is hard to believe that the State should be become more aggressive in these matters as there are more and more people who have found themselves in tough economic times and focusing on non violent economic crimes like these may not be the State’s best use of its own increasingly limited resources.

As for the sentence, 24 years for what amounts to little more than a series of 3rd degree felonies is nothing short of outrageous. This case goes to show why I am always very meticulous about the specific language and all the details that are included in a negotiated plea and how just a small change in terminology can result in a drastically different sentence. I will continue to follow this case on this Blog because it is of interest to everyone in the North Florida defense community.

The link to the Florida Times Union story is here: http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/crime/2009-03-04/story/prosecutors_try_to_reduce_womans_extraordinary_sentence