FARMINGTON — For the fifth time, Steven Shane Tingey, who has been in Davis County Jail for almost three years, showed up in court for a sentencing hearing.
This time, the judge sentenced him to Utah State Prison.
Tingey’s attorney, Mark Arrington, argued at several previous hearings that Tingey, who is a convicted sex offender, should not have to serve a mandatory five years along with whatever else Judge David Connors decided. Arrington said that law became effective after Tingey had committed another sex offense.
Utah’s current law requires convicted sex offenders to serve an additional five years if they are convicted again for another sex crime.
According to court documents, Tingey “took indecent liberties with a child” younger than 14, from Jan. 1, 2005, to Dec. 10, 2007. That case was filed in 2009 after the girl reported the abuse.
Arrington said legislators changed the law in 2007, and the current law should not apply to Tingey.
Tingey, 42, also entered a guilty plea earlier this year to aggravated assault, a third-degree felony. That case was filed in 2007 out of Centerville.
He also entered guilty pleas to bail jumping and failure to register as a sex offender, both third-degree felonies. Those charges were filed in 2010, after he was found in the attic of a house where the girl lived in Woods Cross. He had started a fire in the house and then hid from police.
Arrington said Tingey served 1,036 days in Davis County Jail over the past three years since his arrest in 2009. He also argued that his client should not have to serve any of the sentences consecutively because the plea agreement was for all the sentences to be served concurrently.
Connors sentenced Tingey to serve concurrently three terms of zero to five years at the prison.
He also revoked Tingey’s probation. Tingey was serving a three-year probation for a guilty plea to a 2007 third-degree felony aggravated assault case out of Centerville when he was arrested and charged with the other three felonies in 2009 and 2010.
Connors sentenced Tingey to serve zero to five years at the prison for the 2007 case and for it to be served after the other sentences are completed.
“Just so we all understand, that (plea agreement) is not binding on me,” Connors said. “I came in here with the intent to have all the sentences served consecutively. I’m bowing to the agreement you all made with the other cases.”
Comments