Web-Surfing Mom Wants Trial on Sex Charges

(Forsyth County, Georgia) Last March, 42-year-old mother, Aimee Melissa Josey, was indicted by a Forsyth County grand jury on charges of having sex with a 14-year-old boy she met on the Internet. Authorities say Josey posed as a 14-year-old girl in an Internet chat room to lure a local boy into sex. Similar charges are pending in Fulton County.

In the latest developments, Josey was in court last Thursday where it was anticipated that she would enter into a plea agreement with the prosecution on charges of statutory rape, enticing a child for indecent purposes and aggravated child molestation. Unexpectedly, however, she rejected the plea agreement.

From ForsythNews.com:

Instead, it was announced that Josey had retained high-profile Atlanta attorney Bruce Harvey and wanted to go forward with a trial.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Sandra Partridge said Josey's refusal to plead guilty by Thursday's deadline meant all offers from the state were off the table. She did not say what the state's recommended sentence would have been, but told Judge David Dickinson that part of the deal would have been to drop the most serious charge of aggravated child molestation. Josey faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison without parole if convicted of that charge.

[ . . . ]

Josey was brought into the courtroom in an orange jail-issued jumpsuit. She has been in jail since a judge ordered her bond revoked in a consent order two weeks ago. Prosecutors have accused Josey of trying to threaten the alleged victim through a third party and having unsupervised contact with her teenage daughter, which would violate her bond conditions.

How and why an expensive lawyer got involved with the case is not explained. Nor has it been explained why she hasn't been charged with threatening a witness. And all the while, Josey still faces charges in another county.

More later . . . .

Tip: Don Morgenstern


[Update 11/19/06]

Josey sentenced.