Sentence For Sex Offender Protested
Convicted of abusing a boy, he was given a work-release sentence allowing him to work for a school-bus company.
By Jacqueline Soteropoulos, Inquirer Staff Writer
Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 23, 2002
Turning aside a prosecutor's passionate plea for a tougher sentence, a Philadelphia judge yesterday gave a convicted sex offender and pedophile a sentence that will allow him to work for a company that transports Philadelphia public school children.
The defendant, Floyd Coleman, 45, will be permitted to work for C&C Transportation Inc., which buses school children, while serving a sentence of 2-1/2 to 5 years, minus one day, in a Philadelphia minimum-security detention facility.
In March, a jury convicted Coleman, of North Philadelphia, of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old homeless boy he took into his home last summer.
"We think it's absolutely inappropriate to allow a man of this character … on work release," Assistant District Attorney Kelley Dreyer-Spitz told Common Pleas Court Judge Genece E. Brinkley.
"This company deals with transporting children. That's their job."
An executive at C&C Transportation, where Coleman formerly worked as a bus driver, said yesterday that Coleman would be given a position as an instructor or a supervisor while on work release.
Judge Brinkley's sentence was crafted in a a way to allow Coleman to serve his time in a county facility, where he can have work-release privileges. A sentence of one additional day would have required him to be committed to a state prison.
"This is what I think is fair under the circumstances," Brinkley told Dreyer-Spitz, adding that a half-dozen character witnesses who previously had testified in behalf of Coleman had balanced other, aggravating factors.
Dreyer-Spitz argued that Brinkley should consider the victim's extreme vulnerability. The teen had been sleeping in abandoned cars, under decks, and on roofs until Coleman took him in and began the abuse.
The victim, now 17, wrote the judge: "I feel so empty—at the same time so full of disappointments. Each day I wake up, I get a sense of abuse and WHY?
"I try to remind myself life isn't supposed to be so dark and grim. But no matter how many times I tell myself this, tears began to run down my face."
The youth, now in the care of the Department of Human Services, said he was upset about Coleman's sentence.
"He should be locked up, 'cause it was wrong," he said yesterday after the court proceeding. "It makes no sense."
Dreyer-Spitz said work release was a privilege to be earned.
In an interview yesterday, C&C Transportation executive Dominick A. Cipollini said Coleman had worked for him for 13 years.
"Honest to God, I've never had any problems with him. I told the judge he was a good worker," Cipollini said, adding: "The judge told me, 'No driving any children,' and I agreed."
Cipollini emphasized that Coleman would have no contact with children at work.
But Dreyer-Spitz called it outrageous.
"He's a convicted pedophile, and he'd be instructing other bus drivers on how to interact with children!" she told the judge.
Dreyer-Spitz filed a motion asking Brinkley to reconsider her sentence, arguing that a report of Coleman's criminal record had left out a military court adjudication for sexual assault against a fellow male soldier while Coleman was in the U.S. Army in Korea.
If Brinkley determines Coleman is a repeat offender, the finding could increase the length of the sentence under state guidelines and make him ineligible for work release.
Brinkley told Dreyer-Spitz to produce the military court records and present legal argument that a military conviction should legally be included in Pennsylvania's sentence-guideline calculations. She set a hearing for June 20.
