Published: July 02, 2008 10:36 pm            

Plea rejected in child solicitation case

William Hartman may now stand trial in October

Howard Circuit Court Judge Lynn Murray rejected a proposed plea bargain Wednesday for a man accused of child solicitation because the plea did not carry any jail time.

William Hartman Jr., 25, Kokomo, is now set to stand trial Oct. 21.

Hartman’s plea called for him to plead guilty to a C felony child solicitation charge and be sentenced to three years suspended sentence to be served on probation and to register as a sex offender.

After hearing the evidence and the plea, Murray rejected it and reset a jury trial.

“I thought it was ridiculous that there was no jail time,” Murray said of the plea.

Hartman, who was released on bail the same day he was arrested, is set to reappear in court Oct. 12 for a pre-trial hearing.

Police arrested Hartman in January on the C felony after Hartman allegedly tried to entice who he thought was a 15-year-old young girl on the Internet.

Lt. Don Whitehead, who posed as the young girl on online chatrooms, alleges Hartman solicited sex to the undercover officer and set up meetings with the child.

A Class C felony conviction carries between two and eight years in prison.

Howard County Prosecutor James Fleming, who agreed to file the plea, had no comment on Wednesday’s decision since the case is still pending.

The rejection comes a week after a similar plea against Benoni Ellis, another alleged child solicitor, in Howard Superior Court 2, was granted.

Judge Stephen Jessup accepted the plea for Ellis, 59, Peru, who was charged with a similar crime as Hartman.

Ellis were sentenced to three years in prison, suspended except for one day he served prior to posting bail and placed on probation for three years.

As a condition of probation, Ellis was ordered to supply a DNA sample, comply with special conditions for adults sex offenders and register as a sex offender.

Police arrested the men in January and February, respectively after police allege the pair tried to solicit young girls on the Internet in separate cases.

In the Ellis case, Whitehead posed on numerous occasions between May 2007 and January in a Yahoo! online chatroom as a 13-year-old girl and was contacted by Ellis, who then set up a meeting place.

When Ellis arrived, police were there waiting to arrest him.

Mike Fletcher may be reached at (765) 454-8565 or via e-mail at mike.fletcher@kokomotribune.com

        

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