Man gets prison time for beating girlfriend
By Amanda H. Miller, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
February 27, 2009
A man who pleaded guilty to beating his girlfriend when she was seven months pregnant was sentenced this week to four to six years in the Wyoming Sate Penitentiary.
Jose Luis Velazquez Romero, 26, pleaded to one count of aggravated assault and battery. Beating a pregnant woman is a felony in Wyoming.
Velazquez Romero pleaded in accordance with an agreement that capped his sentence at four to six years but allowed for a lower penalty.
Nicole Krieger, deputy prosecuting attorney for Teton County, said she felt the plea agreement was appropriate but would ask 9th District Judge Nancy Guthrie to impose the maximum sentence allowable in the plea agreement.
“The impact that this has had on the victim and the victim’s family,” Krieger said. “We have a case where the victim was at first too afraid to report to law enforcement.”
She said the victim was badly beaten and hospitalized because of injuries and bleeding that could have harmed the fetus.
“So maybe the plea agreement is light?” Guthrie said.
Krieger said the agreement was appropriate because the abuse wasn’t reported until almost a year later.
Traci Sampson, Velazquez Romero’s court-appointed attorney, said he’s lived in Jackson for more than six years with nothing more than a driving-under-the-influence charge on his record. She urged Guthrie to consider a lower sentence.
“This is very uncharacteristic of him,” Sampson said. “He does need some treatment, and I think alcohol was a factor in this case.”
She asked Guthrie to recommend Velazquez Romero for a drug and alcohol treatment program in the prison system.
Several friends and family members spoke on Velazquez Romero’s behalf, along with a pastor who had been meeting with him in jail. They all said he was a good man who strayed.
Krieger said the case has been hard on the victim and that Velazquez Romero’s friends and family had been harassing her and threatening her. Krieger asked Guthrie to order Velazquez Romero to have no contact, direct or indirect, with the victim.
Guthrie sentenced Velazquez Romero to the maximum sentence allowable in the agreement, recommended drug and alcohol treatment, and ordered that he have no contact with the victim.
