Yes, Ledezma freely admitted that in August 2008 he raped, sodomized and got forced oral copulation from a 6-year-old girl when he was 20 years old.

But he thinks that he should have been allowed to plead guilty and then have some time–a few weeks or months?–to contemplate the consequences and then change his mind.Though he acknowledged in open court what he’d done, Ledezma believes he was rushed into pleading guilty and didn’t have adequate time to think about the consequences.

“I had no priors or any crime history,” he told a panel of California Court of Appeal justices in Santa Ana. “I always follow the rules.”

The prosecutor wanted Ledezma to serve a 50 years to life sentence, but Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals gave him a term of 25 years to life because he pleaded guilty prior to a jury trial.

After he pleaded guilty and got sentenced, he changed his mind.

“It was too much time [in prison]” he wrote to the appellate justices.

But Justice Kathleen O’Leary opined that Ledezma should feel lucky. He faced a potential prison term of 75 years to life.

“Based on Ledezma’s admission of guilt, which allowed the victim to avoid testifying at trial, the court imposed a significantly reduced sentenced,” O’Leary wrote in her opinion. “There is nothing in the record to suggest this sentence was either inappropriate or illegal.”

Case closed.

Source: OC Weekly

Michael William Snyder, 43, a San Clemente resident, allegedly rubbed the girl’s chest and stomach under her shirt “with a sexual intent” and sat her on his lap and put his hands up her skirt, the Orange County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

The girl’s mother became suspicious after her daughter did not want to be left alone with Snyder, according to the district attorney’s office. The mother contacted authorities.

Snyder calls himself “Mr. Mike” and is an author and illustrator, according to his website. He could not be reached Monday afternoon for comment.

He is charged with four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 and is free on $100,000 bail, authorities said. Snyder is scheduled to be arraigned April 8 at the Newport Beach courthouse.

Anyone with information is asked to call Investigator Lou Gutiérrez at (714) 347-8794

Source: Los Ángeles Times

A man who volunteered with the deaf ministry at a Central Florida church, who also told federal agents he engaged in “sexual acts” with boys, is slated to be sentenced in Orlando federal court today on child pornography charges.

Jerry Nickelsen, 46, signed a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in August, admitting guilt to a count of distribution of child pornography and a count of possession of child pornography.

The FBI began investigating Nickelsen in May in an undercover capacity through a peer-to-peer online file sharing program. Detectives saw child pornography in Nickelsen’s shared directories.

When agents searched Nickelsen’s Orange County home this summer, he told them he traded child porn, saved the images and videos on DVDs and CDs, and that he looked at the images for two to three hours each night, according to his plea agreement.

Nickelsen also told agents he engaged in “sexual acts” with at least seven boys, ranging from 5 to 13 years old, during the past 20 years, the plea agreement said.

Agents said they found more than 9,000 images and about 1,450 videos containing images of child pornography on his computer hard drives, DVDs and CDs.

Nickelsen volunteered with First Baptist Church of Central Florida’s deaf ministry, where he taught a beginning Bible class to adults, the senior pastor earlier told the Orlando Sentinel.

Nickelsen’s sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Check back Orlando Sentinel for updates.

apavuk@tribune.com or 407-420-5735

Source: Orlando Sentinel

The Associated Press – SANTA ANA, Calif.—A convicted pedophile who became the public face of Megan’s Law in the 1990s was denied his bid for release from a state mental facility on Thursday.An Orange County Superior Court jury determined Sid Landau, 69, was still a threat to society and should remain hospitalized in state custody, where he has been held for eight years.

Two previous juries deadlocked on whether Landau should be released.

Dressed in a blue-and-white checkered shirt, the gray-haired Landau looked down at the table, sighed and whispered to his lawyer, “I’m going to die in jail,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Prosecutors pursued a petition under the state’s sexually violent predator statute, which allows offenders deemed a continual threat to remain hospitalized in state custody after their prison sentences are completed.

Landau claimed he is not a threat because of his age and poor health, including prostate cancer and heart surgery. But prosecutors argued he is incurable.

Landau was convicted of molesting two boys in the 1980s but has admitted to abusing 10. He served a combined 10 years in prison on those convictions.

He became one of Southern California’s most recognizable pedophiles in the 1990s when police, who were enforcing Megan’s Law for the first time, distributed fliers in his Placentia neighborhood identifying him as a convicted sex offender.

He was chased from a series of homes and motels by death threats and protesters until he was arrested on parole violations in 1997.

He was transferred to a state mental hospital in 2000 following his second probation violation.

Megan’s Law was enacted in 1996 and allows police to publicize the whereabouts of sex offenders.