15763: (Hermantin) Palm Beach Post-Attorney calls new charges 'retaliation' (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Attorney calls new charges 'retaliation'


By John Pacenti, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 30, 2003



WEST PALM BEACH -- The state attorney's office offered the best plea deal it
could muster to Rosemanine Saimplice:

Plead guilty to beating her young son with a belt in a supermarket parking
lot and receive pre-trial intervention, a program for first-time offenders
that erases any record of a conviction if they stay out of trouble for a
short period of time.

Saimplice turned down the offer and chose to go to trial because she
insisted she didn't beat her son.

Saimplice then accused sheriff's deputies of leaving her three children --
ages 4, 3 and 1 -- alone in her apartment for two hours after they arrested
her Jan. 28.

But as Saimplice goes to trial today, prosecutors, rather than offer the
leanest penalty possible, have amended the charges. Now the Lake Park woman
faces aggravated child abuse -- a first-degree felony -- instead of child
abuse, a lesser charge. Prosecutors also added another charge of child
abuse.

Saimplice's attorney, Robert Guerrier, called the actions by State Attorney
Barry Krischer's office "unethical" and a clear attempt to punish his client
for exercising her right of free speech and to go to trial.

"It's clearly retaliation," Guerrier said. "Now she faces 35 years in prison
if convicted for something she didn't do."

Mike Edmondson, Krischer's spokesman, said the office doesn't comment on
filing decisions.

Saimplice's case appeared weak from the outset. The investigating deputy
said there was no probable cause to arrest Saimplice in September after he
viewed no visible welts on the 4-year-old and discovered no belt.

The Department of Children and Families also investigated the incident and
checked out the Saimplice home and found nothing wrong, Guerrier said.

Saimplice said she did slap her son, Romanes, on the wrist in the parking
lot after he ran in front of a truck. Saimplice, who spent only a few hours
in jail, is Haitian and speaks very little English.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office has denied deputies left the
Saimplice children alone, saying the three children were in the care of a
neighbor.

DCF said it should have been contacted and that, even if the children were
left with a neighbor, that neighbor had not been screened.

john_pacenti@pbpost.com

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