WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a plea from a convicted rapist from Mountlake Terrace to reduce his prison sentence, without deciding whether the court’s 3-year-old ruling on prison sentences applies to older cases.
The justices said in an unsigned opinion that Lonnie Lee Burton’s appeal had procedural problems that should have prevented it from being heard in the first place.
The Snohomish County jury found Burton guilty in 1992 of giving a teen an NBA jacket in exchange for oral sex. Burton was a basketball referees from 1982 to 1990, and officials said he may have officiated in as many as 100 junior and senior high school games.
When Burton was arrested by Mountlake Terrace police in 1990, officers found videotapes and photos of naked juvenile males, some apparently engaged in sex acts with Burton, court records show.
Burton was 27 when he was sentenced for a third-degree child rape conviction in 1992 in Snohomish County. He was awaiting trial for four child-sex charges in King County.
Burton had asked the Supreme Court to cut his 46-year prison term by 21 years. The sentence was imposed by a judge in Washington state in 1998, but Burton’s lawyer said the 2004 ruling limiting judges’ discretion in handing out prison time should apply to Burton’s case.
Washington and 18 other states disagreed.
Tuesday’s court action was unusual only in that the justices accepted Burton’s case in June and heard argument in November before determining that lower courts had been wrong to consider the merits of Burton’s appeal. Even so, those courts had ruled against him.
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