Man sentenced to 60 days for sexual assault (New One)Man sentenced to 60 days for sexual assault
January 21, 2006
By David Gram Associated Press
MONTPELIER — A county prosecutor said Friday that a 60-day prison term for a man who pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a juvenile, a 15-year-old girl, was the best the state could get under the circumstances.
The comment from Windham County State's Attorney Dan Davis came a day after Marc Cartner, 38, of Jamaica, pleaded guilty to sexual assault on a minor and two counts of violating his conditions of release.
Judge Katherine Hayes, sitting in Vermont District Court for Windham County, accepted the plea deal on Thursday morning.
"You're an adult," Hayes was quoted by the Brattleboro Reformer as telling Cartner during the sentencing hearing. "You're supposed to be mature."
Cartner got a two-to-four-year sentence, with all but 60 days suspended. He'll be on probation when released and must go through the state's sex-offender treatment program. He also will be on the state's sex-offender registry and must provide authorities with a DNA sample for a police database.
Cartner's guilty plea came two weeks and one day after another 60-day minimum sentence for a sex offender, Mark Hulett, 34, of Williston, generated a firestorm of controversy that still has not abated.
Some legislators and conservative commentators around the country have called for the judge in that Chittenden County case, Edward Cashman, to be removed from the bench. Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly called this week for a boycott of Vermont until Cashman is off the bench.
A key difference in the two cases was that Hulett had a four-year sexual relationship with a girl that began when she was 6; the victim in Cartner's case was 15.
"Nobody can really compare a relationship in which the victim is 15 years old to one where she's 6," said Steven Wright, Cartner's lawyer. "While both criminal, they're very different circumstances."
Davis and Deputy State's Attorney David Gartenstein said the family of the girl, who was 15 when she and Cartner began a sexual relationship, had asked prosecutors to strike the plea deal to spare the victim from having to testify.
Davis said the relationship began when the girl was "three weeks shy of her 16th birthday." Sixteen is the age of consent in Vermont, and sex between Cartner and a 16-year-old would not have been a crime.
"We were certainly aware of the controversy surrounding the Cashman sentence (of Hulett)," Davis said. "But David (Gartenstein) is an experienced trial attorney. He had a difficult case and resolved the matter in a manner that he thought was appropriate and best served the interests of justice."
Prosecutors had offered Cartner the plea deal on Wednesday, but he opted to go to trial. Cartner changed his mind on Thursday morning after a day of testimony in which the victim's mother wept on the witness stand.
"At one point he decided enough was enough," Wright said.
The victim was refusing to testify as of Wednesday, but agreed to on Thursday. But before she could take the stand, Cartner made known his willingness to accept the plea deal he had been offered a day earlier.
Davis said, "In a lot of places this kind of case wouldn't even have been brought. But this enabled us to identify someone who's a sex offender. We could have ignored a difficult case and he'd be out in the community not identified."
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