72-year-old convict’s lawyer tried to warn a judge his health couldn’t handle jail. The defendant was dead in less than a day
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — John Longo didn’t have to die in jail, his defense lawyer says.
But keeping him out of custody after he was found guilty of cheating a boat seller out of a $75,000 vessel may not have been an option. Despite Longo’s poor health, Broward Circuit Judge Tim Bailey ordered him into custody after the jury convicted him on Feb. 4. Before the sun came up the next morning, Longo, 72, was dead, just as his lawyer had warned.
Longo’s death illustrates the constant pressure judges are under to balance justice and mercy. Court dockets are always teeming with pleas for “downward departures” from convicted defendants urging judges to go easy on them. They cite a variety of reasons, including mental health, youth, old age and level of maturity.
“After a while a judge gets a good feel for what is and is not worthy of consideration,” said retired Broward Circuit Judge Paul Backman. “If you let someone out and they victimize someone else, it’s the judge’s name that’s going to be on the front page of the newspaper.”
That Longo’s illness was serious was never in question. He showed up for trial hooked up to an oxygen machine. “The jury could see he had a long breathing tube put up to his nose,” said his lawyer, Marco Quesada.
The attorney submitted letters from the defendant’s cardiologist and pulmonologist outlining his client’s health problems and warning of what might happen if he were to be jailed.
Backman and other legal experts say Bailey likely had no choice but to remand Longo into custody. Quesada and other defense lawyers disagree.
Bailey’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Broward State Attorney’s Office did not demand or oppose Longo’s immediate incarceration.
While Longo was older than most defendants, his victim was even older. According to court records, Longo promised to buy a boat from a seller who is now 86. Any delay of the trial’s proceedings, already impacted by the COVID pandemic, could have an effect on the victim, too.
According to the charges, Longo filed a title transfer with the U.S. Coast Guard claiming ownership of the vessel before he paid a dime to the victim. Longo could not produce a canceled check or any evidence that he had withdrawn $75,000 in cash to pay for the boat, according to a Broward Sheriff’s Office report.
It was not Longo’s first brush with the law. In 1987 he was convicted of 18 counts of grand theft. Records show other convictions for burglary and fraud, the most recent in 2004. All those convictions factored into his criminal history to determine a sentencing recommendation known as a “score.” The higher a defendant’s score, the more time he could be expected to serve in prison for a crime.
Longo’s score, factoring in his prior convictions, would have resulted in a minimum sentence of 62 months, or a little over five years. Sentencing had not been scheduled, but would likely have taken place in late March or early April.
But Longo was dead in a day. The Broward Sheriff’s Office, which runs the county jails, said Longo was first taken to the North Broward Bureau in Pompano Beach, then to Northwest Medical Center in Margate, where he was pronounced dead.
“We were talking about an economic crime, no weapons involved,” said Quesada. “It should have been a case resolved in the civil court.”
His demise was first reported by the courthouse news and gossip site JAABlog.
Lindsay Lawrence Chase, newly elected president of the Broward Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said Longo’s death underscores a need to give judges more leeway in deciding when to jail a convicted defendant. “I think in this case Judge Bailey’s hands were tied,” she said.
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