USA - Texas. Sex offender gets 80 life sentences

Sex offender gets 80 life sentences. Scott Lee Zulfer was sentenced to 80 life sentences today after pleading guilty to charges of aggravated and continuous sexual abuse against a child. Zulfer, 44, white, who originally pleaded innocent to 68 charges of aggravated sexual assault and 12 charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young female relative when he was charged in May, changed his plea to guilty today. Temporary 198th District Court Judge Robert Barton accepted Zulfer’s written confessions along with prosecutors’ recommendations that he be sentenced to life in prison for each of the charges against him. Zulfer’s court-appointed attorney, Steve Pickell, declined to comment after the sentencing about why his client changed his plea less than two weeks before he was due to stand trial. With his guilty plea, Zulfer admits to repeatedly sexually abusing the same child victim between May 2006 and December 2008. Zulfer has no prior sexual assault convictions. According to the district attorney’s office, penalties in the case against Zulfer were enhanced by the Texas version of Jessica’s Law, which was passed by the state legislature in 2007. Jessica’s Law was enacted as part of a national movement following the rape and murder of a 9-year-old Florida girl by a convicted sex offender in 2005. According to the law, a first conviction for a raping a child younger than 6 carries a penalty of 25 years to life in prison, as do particularly violent or egregious cases against children between the ages of 7 and 14.