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Romano: 10-20-Life is being reformed, but let's not forget those unjustly imprisoned by it

 
Published Jan. 31, 2016

In Tallahassee, there are handshakes and back slaps. Lawmakers seem poised to fix the horribly flawed 10-20-Life law, and so justice in Florida will finally be saner.

Yet in the Polk Correctional Institute, life never changes. Not for a man given a 20-year sentence at age 23 for firing warning shots when a group of angry men surrounded his car outside of a bar.

Nor is the world any different in the Blackwater River Correctional Facility. Not for an aging man given a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot into his living room wall to scare his daughter's abusive boyfriend.

Lawmakers deserve kudos for addressing the lunacy of minimum mandatory sentencing, but the story should not end there.

In fact, it can't end there. Not when there are still people sitting in prison, serving absurd sentences under a law that the Legislature has acknowledged is unjust.

Now that lawmakers seem ready to do their jobs to prevent future abuses, Gov. Rick Scott must do his and correct past abuses.

It is time for Florida to take a hard look at clemency for people caught in this state's inflexible minimum mandatory sentencing laws.

And they can begin with Erik Weyant and Orville Lee Wollard. Both were convicted of aggravated assault for firing warning shots with legally owned handguns.

While Weyant and Wollard say they were trapped in threatening situations, two separate juries considered the evidence and determined a crime had been committed.

That's not today's issue.

The larger point is no one was harmed, and neither man had previous convictions. In both situations, someone else instigated the confrontation.

In other words, they were exactly the type of cases that calls for a judge to use discretion in sentencing. Except, the 10-20-Life law, pushed by former Gov. Jeb Bush in 1999, does not allow that.

If a handgun is fired during a felony, a 20-year sentence is the automatic result.

"It was never the intent of the Legislature when this law was passed to have these type of cases being decided,'' said Rep. Neil Combee, R-Polk City, who began reforming 10-20-Life in 2014. "Now everybody is on board to get it fixed.''

The proposed legislation doesn't obliterate minimum mandatory sentences, but it does remove aggravated assault from under the 10-20-Life umbrella.

But since there is no retroactive component to the impending fix, it's up to the clemency board to right the state's previous wrongs.

Wollard, now 60, went before the board last year, but Scott denied his plea before the Cabinet had a chance to weigh in. Neither Weyant nor Wollard is eligible to apply for clemency this year, but the board can choose to hear cases of extreme nature.

"Wollard was offered a plea deal with five years' probation but he turned it down, and then gets sentenced to 20 years,'' Combee said. "How does that make sense? Where is the justice in that?

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"It breaks my heart that he's still sitting in prison, but hopefully we can get him in front of the board again.''

Weyant, now 32, has already served more than eight years just for firing a warning shot. Wollard has served more than seven years. That they are still in prison is a larger crime than what they were convicted of in the first place. It's past time for Scott and the Cabinet to correct that injustice.