Saying the guidelines were not harsh enough, U.S. District Judge Richard Haik Wednesday sentenced former Acadiana High School teacher Stephen Hurst to 324 months in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release for enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity.
The 38-year-old pleaded guilty in February to using a facility in interstate commerce to cause a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity. According to testimony at Wednesday’s sentencing, Hurst acknowledged that beginning in 2005 through March of 2010, he offered male students under the age of 18 the opportunity to use his residence so that they could engage in sexual activities with female students under the age of 16. The defendant would text the students and offer his apartment for them to meet. On some occasions, Hurst would hide a video camera in the room and videotape the minors engaging in sexual activity.
Hurst’s actions even after his arrest last year would make matters worse in his sentencing.
Before his plea of guilty, in an effort to obtain a lesser sentence, Hurst submitted false information to the FBI, according to U.S. Attorney Stephanie Finley. He claimed that a major drug dealer had the address of an assistant U.S. attorney and intended to kill him. As a result of an investigation, it was determined that Hurst had obtained the information about the assistant from somewhere other than jail and was attempting to get a reduced sentence by lying to federal authorities.
At sentencing, Haik found that the sentencing guidelines were not appropriate. He stated that “a teacher who exploits children over and over again is the most serious crime that one could commit.” The judge advised the defendant that the fact that he submitted false information to the FBI was a further demonstration that he was not truly sorry for his crimes. To give a lesser sentence than the guidelines called for would fail to take into account the seriousness of the offense, Haik noted.
“This defendant created an environment with the goal of exploiting children,” Finley said. “This offense is the most serious of offenses because this defendant was a trusted teacher placed in charge of these children, and he violated their trust and the trust of their parents. Hurst not only caused them to produce child pornography, but he exploited them even further by showing the pornography that he made of them to other children, exploiting even more children.”
JUNE 19 Former Saint Steve Gleason, who is paralyzed by ALS, released a statement Tuesday in response to the Atlanta radio station's skit making fun of him and the disease, this Picayune post reports. What did he say? He said he'd accepted the apology of the DJs who did it, notes that at least the incident has got people talking about ALS, and asks anyone who is burning to take action about it to do so -- by helping him fight ALS.
JUNE 19 Blogger Ian McGibboney takes a look at the Gleason incident in this post. He makes a good argument about the difference between having free speech and being free from consequences for your speech (which none of us is). He also admits that many of us got upset before we listened to the skit -- but lets us know that the reality is far worse than we can imagine. It was the incredibly bad judgment, even more than the actual speech, that probably got those DJs fired, he opines.
JUNE 19 Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake writes about Sen. Guillory's switch to the GOP in this post. He writes what most political watchers in Louisiana know: Guillory was a Republican before he decided to run for the senate seat in a mostly-D St. Landry district, and has switched back now that he plans to run for Lt. Gov. in a mostly-R state. But how come Blake missed Guillory's appearance on a TLC pageant show? Now that is a video we'd like to see. (Again).
JUNE 19 Here's another Washington Post blog post about a Louisiana politician, and it's just plain scathing. Ezra Klein says Jindal's Politico post was "insulting" to the intelligence of voters, and adds that Jindal is personifying the "stupid" he's railed against, by being an "elite" who convinces GOP activists of "things that aren't true." Me-ow.
JUNE 19 Here's Gov. Jindal's post in Politico, in which he asks the GOP to get over losing to Obama (again) and stop "the bedwetting." (Uh, what?) He gives his Republican buddies what is probably a nerd's idea of a coach's motivational talk, which starts with a list of accomplishments that they can't seem to exploit and ending with an absurd description of liberals that sounds like a character treatment for a Fox "News" movie scripted by Gordon Liddy. Sure, he's preaching to the choir, but even the choir's not this gullible.
JUNE 19 Lamar Parmentel read Gov. Jindal's post on Politico, but thinks it was so dumb it probably was published in the wrong paper. This post by Lamar on the Daily Kingfish opines that possibly Jindal's post was destined for the Onion -- because the governor couldn't possibly be serious here. If you listen closely, you can hear the staff of the Kingfish giggling.
JUNE 19 Blogger Robert Mann posts from Turkey, a country he has visited several times in the past few years. Mann gives an interesting overview of the current political and societal climate of the country, which -- if you're living under a rock and don't know -- is experiencing protests and turmoil these days. Mann promises to post as much as he can during his trip, which should be fascinating reading.
JUNE 19 Blogger CB Forgotston says the legislature is keeping the vicious cycle going with its funding of new buildings for the community college/technical college system. Universities across the state need maintenance and improvement on existing buildings, and the solution is to build new buildings at other schools? By the time the bonds are paid off, those buildings will be falling down, too, CB says.
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