KTKA

Michael Burlison is outraged by the sentence a judge handed down to a sex offender last week. The same judge allowed the man convicted of repeatedly raping Burlison's daughter to walk free last year.

Last Friday, Shawnee County District Court Judge Matthew Dowd sentenced a 35-year-old man who pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor to 30 months in prison.

Gustavo Arreola-Martinez, Topeka, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated indecent liberties with a child last December, after having sex with a 13-year-old girl and fathering her child, according to court records. The man was initially charged with rape in 2006, but the charges were reduced by the district attorney's office in December 2007.

The 2 1/2 year sentence, imposed last Friday, is about one-half the time recommended by the state's sentencing guidelines. The guidelines, which serve as a guide to a judge when sentencing guilty defendants, recommended a 55 to 61 month prison sentence.

Dowd departed from the sentencing guidelines, partially because Arreola-Martinez has no criminal record, court records indicate. Arreola-Martinez was also sentenced to three years probation upon completion of his prison sentence.

Dowd has not returned our call for comment.

Dowd's decision comes after he came under fire for sentencing Orlando Paul Cisneros, convicted of repeatedly raping and sodomizing a 14-year-old girl, to three years probation in May 2007. Under sentencing guidelines, it was recommended Dowd sentence Cisneros to 13 years behind bars.

A jury found Cisneros guilty of 17 charges, including aggravated indecent liberties, criminal sodomy and rape.

Cisneros tested positive for marijuana only five days after being placed on probation, according to court records. Dowd eventually removed himself from the case and Shawnee County District Court Judge Charles Andrews sentenced Cisneros to 13 years in prison in August 2007.

After the initial probation sentence, a local and national outcry sent tremors through the justice system. Burlison hasn't sat quiet ever since. And, he's not happy about the sentence Dowd imposed on Arreola-Martinez last week.

"We are forced to sit by and let this inhuman lowlife continue to spread his evil rulings on our community and its citizens," Burlinson said in a statement he emailed to 49 News.

Self-proclaimed victims' rights advocate Claudine Dombrowski is also upset.

"I think it's repulsive," she said. "It's very nauseating that a society thinks this is acceptable, when it simply is not."

Burlison and Dombrowski have been lobbying legislators to reduce the powers judges have.

The Cisneros case and others prompted Rep. Joe Patton, R-Topeka, to take action. The freshman legislator and more than a dozen other lawmakers introduced a series of bills this year to limit a judge's leeway in setting sentences. That includes House Bill 2732, which would limit the ability of judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines on crimes of extreme sexual violence.

It would allow judges to give a lighter sentence, only if agreed to by a prosecutor. Even then, the sentence could only be reduced by 50 percent from what is recommended by the guidelines.

According to the bill, judges would be restricted from departing from the sentencing guidelines, if any of the following were true:

• A crime involved a nonconsensual act of sexual intercourse or sodomy with any person.
• A crime involved an act of sexual intercourse, sodomy or lewd fondling and touching with any child who is 14 or more years of age but less than 16 years of age and with whom a relationship has been established or promoted for the primary purpose of victimization.
• A crime involved an act of sexual intercourse, sodomy or lewd fondling and touching with any child who is less than 14 years of age.

The bill is expected to go back in front of the house judiciary committee at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Patton said.