The case against former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg has no shortage of disgusting details, not least of which is that a man in his mid-30s, a man in a position of authority, took advantage of a 17-year-old girl.
For that and other offenses, Greenberg is facing a long stint in a federal pen.
Another Central Florida figure of authority, who also pleaded guilty to having sex with a 17-year-old, is facing a much different punishment.
Andrew John Jones, a former prosecutor and candidate for Seminole County judge, isn’t going to serve a day behind bars under a plea deal reached with prosecutors earlier this month. Nor will his name go on the state’s registry of convicted sex offenders. He’s getting two years of community control, basically house arrest, and eight years of probation.
What’s the public supposed to take away from this outcome? Does society view the idea of older adults having sex with underage kids as a grotesque moral betrayal that deserves a severe punishment, or do we see it as a lapse in judgment that shouldn’t rise to time behind bars?
Or does it depend more on who you are, not what you’ve done?
We understand that administering justice is an imperfect process where these questions don’t always yield easy answers, but one thing is for sure: The circumstances in Jones’ case are in fact grotesque, a betrayal of the trust kids should have in adults.
And the plea deal he got seems outrageously generous.
Jones was a prosecutor for the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney’s Office from 2006 until 2012. He left and worked in his father’s law firm before deciding to seek office as a county judge in the 2020 election. Jones was clearly the favorite, pulling in big checks from lots of prominent attorneys and law firms.
Until August of 2019. That’s when, at age 40, he decided to have sex with a 17-year-old girl, even though as a former prosecutor he certainly must have known that under the law a girl that age can’t have consensual sex with a man his age.
The girl had been working at Jones’ law firm for several months and went to his Longwood home one night to help with some campaign work. They ended up in his bed upstairs.
Was Jones remorseful? Well, the following day, after finding out the girl wasn’t taking birth control, Jones drove her to a CVS and bought a contraceptive pill that prevents pregnancy after unprotected sex.
The girl reported everything that happened to authorities, and fast-acting Seminole County sheriff’s investigators pulled together what looked to be an airtight case, complete with DNA showing the two had sex and video proof that Jones bought the day-after pill.
Jones dropped out of the judicial race and was arrested on Sept. 9, 2019, charged with a second-degree felony of having sex with a person 16 or 17 years old, an offense that can carry a prison term of up to 15 years and a $10,000 fine.
The case was reassigned from Seminole County’s judicial circuit to the one that includes Volusia, and Jones hired one of the region’s high-powered defense lawyers, Mark O’Mara.
The end result: In a plea deal finalized this month, the charge against Jones was reduced from unlawful sex with a minor to child abuse, a third-degree felony that carries less jail time and a lower fine.
But Jones isn’t getting any jail time. He also wasn’t fined. Instead he was ordered to pay about $700 in court costs and $3,000 in restitution for the girl’s counseling.
And here’s what may be the key point: A child abuse conviction keeps Jones off Florida’s sex offender registry, where his mug shot and address would be kept for the world to see. Had Jones been convicted of unlawful sex with a minor, he would have landed on the registry, as have plenty of others who were found guilty of that charge.
What a sweet deal for Jones, a well-connected attorney. What we’re curious to know is whether the same deal would have been available to a poorly connected, 40-year-old man facing a mountain of evidence proving he had sex with a 17-year-old kid.
When prosecutors made this deal they knew of another pending allegation against Jones, this one an accusation of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child younger than 12. In this case, the alleged victim told a Sentinel reporter that Jones had touched her inappropriately some 10 years ago. But the case was closed shortly after Jones’ plea deal.
We would like to have discussed the deal with O’Mara or the prosecutor who handled the case, Jeanne Stratis, but they didn’t respond to our emails.
While trust has eroded in many American institutions, from Congress to the media, the judicial system has retained a relatively high standing. How long can that endure when the powerful get what look like sweetheart deals after committing loathsome crimes?
Was justice done here? Jones probably thinks so.
We do not.
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Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com .
