Merrimack County prosecutors argued before a three-judge panel Friday that a Warner man convicted of raping a boy at gunpoint received too lenient of a sentence last August.
Judge Richard McNamara handed down a minimum sentence of 12½ years for Ricky Flanders despite prosecutors’ request for 20 to 60 years in state prison.
During a sentence review hearing Friday, Assistant County Attorney Joseph Cherniske accused McNamara of making three critical errors when issuing his judgment, which failed to have public safety in mind. Conversely, public defender Hanna Kinne asked the review board to uphold the sentence imposed last year by McNamara, saying the judge took into account the unique complexities of the case and handed down an appropriate sentence.
A jury convicted Flanders, now 50, in early 2017 of eight counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault of a boy between August 1988 and August 1993. The police investigation found that Flanders threatened physical violence – including with a gun and a knife – on more than one occasion if the boy did not comply with his demands.
“This is violent, this is as bad as it gets and 12½ years does not reflect that,” Cherniske said.
While Flanders could have faced up to 37½ years in prison, Cherniske said McNamara considered his sentencing decision under the preconceived notion that “the standard maximum sentence for an AFSA (aggravated felonious sexual assault) case is 20 to 40 years.”
Cherniske explained that these crimes can range from a single act of inappropriately touching a child to a pattern of repeated sexual abuse, and that they all can’t be weighed equally by the court.
Years after the sexual abuse ended, Flanders continued to threaten the victim, who was silenced for decades and who, despite the conviction, has not healed, Cherniske said. While law abiding behavior between the date of a crime and the date of a conviction may result in a reduced sentence for some defendants, he argued Flanders continued to impose harm.
McNamara said members of the public should be deterred from committing similar crimes, in part, because authorities were able to build a solid case against Flanders three decades after the initial offense. But fear of a significant prison sentence should be the prime deterrence, Cherniske said.
“Shouldn’t this sentence speak to the public and tell them they’re going to be safe from violent sexual offenders against children?” he asked. “Shouldn’t it tell the defendant that committing crimes like this will result in very long prison sentences?”
Flanders will be incarcerated until he is at least 62 years old. Upon his release, he will be monitored by parole and have a significant suspended prison sentence hanging over him – something the court could impose should he commit any other crimes.
Kinne argued McNamara handed down a significant sentence after considering the victim’s testimony, support letters submitted by Flanders’s family and friends, testimony from two women who alleged sexual assault by Flanders at other times, and Flanders’s behavior between the date of the charged crimes and his conviction.
“This is a case that’s very hard to compare to other sentences,” she said.
Judges Lawrence MacLeod Jr., Charles Temple and Tina Nadeau, who serves as chief justice of the state’s superior court system, took the matter under advisement. A decision is expected in about one week.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)