Judge won’t reconsider 100-year prison term

PARIS, TEXAS —  For more than six hours Tuesday, as a parade of witnesses testified about the severity of Aaron Hart’s mental retardation and his inability to understand his legal rights, the 18-year-old defendant with an IQ of 47 sat silent and shackled in a chair, alternately fidgeting, daydreaming and making faces.

In the end, none of it was enough to persuade a judge in this small East Texas town to reconsider the 100-year prison sentence he gave Hart in February after the teenager pleaded guilty to sexually molesting a 6-year-old boy.

Ruling in a case that critics of the local justice system say raises questions of proportionality and fairness for the mentally disabled, Judge Eric Clifford of the 6th District Court in Lamar County denied defense motions seeking either a new trial or a new sentencing hearing for Hart. A former special-education teacher for Hart testified that he functions below the level of a first-grader.

In September, Hart confessed to police that he forced the boy to perform oral sex. The boy’s stepmother had discovered them both behind a shed with their pants lowered.

Hart’s court-appointed defense attorney entered guilty pleas on his behalf to five related felony counts, a jury recommended multiple sentences, and Clifford stacked the prison terms to run consecutively, totaling 100 years.

But Hart’s appellate attorney, David Pearson, argued Tuesday that the teenager had received ineffective legal assistance because his trial attorney had failed to present any expert testimony about Hart’s diminished mental functioning or his ability to comprehend the charges against him.

“This case cried out for a mental health evaluation, to explain this disability to the judge and jury,” Pearson told Clifford. “One of the features of people with this kind of mental retardation is they cannot appreciate degrees of wrongfulness.”

The prosecutor in the case, Lamar County Dist. Atty. Gary Young, countered that a court-appointed expert had determined Hart was legally competent to enter a guilty plea and that a jury determined he was a danger to the community.

“Everyone feels sorry for Mr. Hart,” Young told the judge. “The question is, do you leave him on the street or send him to prison?” Clifford, who last week said he had agonized over the case, took only a few seconds to issue his ruling.

“Irregardless of whether he understood his Miranda rights, the evidence I have seen is overwhelming that he committed the offense,” the judge said. “The court finds that allegations of incompetence of counsel are unfounded.”

Clifford’s decision means that Hart will remain in jail pending the outcome of an appeal likely to be heard in the fall. Hart’s parents say he has been repeatedly raped by other inmates since he was arrested in September.

“This is just horrible,” Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist who has monitored Hart’s case, said after Clifford made his ruling. “How could the judge not take his mental ability into consideration?”

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hwitt@tribune.com