PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A former Bay County Sheriff 's Office deputy was sentenced to prison Friday after pleading no contest to felony charges that followed allegations he raped a woman while on duty and then kidnapped her and her child after the woman reported the attack.
Benjamin L ogue, 28, pleaded no contest to a felony battery charge and a felony tampering with a witness charge Friday afternoon before Judge Michael Overstreet, who sentenced the former deputy to 42 months in prison and 18 months of felony probation.
Logue was arrested in June after a woman accused him of putting her in the back of his patrol car, taking her to a remote area and raping her. His attorney, Waylon Graham, told the judge there was DNA evidence in the case that probably would have supported the state's case but he did not go into specific details.
Logue posted bail while awaiting trial on the sexual battery charge, but he was rearrested after the victim reported a man posing as an investigator for the State Attorney's Office picked her and her 3-year-old child up and took them to a home, where he urged them to drop the charges. The man turned out to be Logue and the home he took them to was his own.
In court Friday, Logue apologized and asked Overstreet for a slight reduction to the sentence in the plea agreement. Logue asked that he be sentenced to 39 months rather than 42 so he could keep his promise to his daughter and walk her to her first day of school.
"I want to apologize to Bay County, the Sheriff 's Department, the sheriff and my family and friends for the pain and embarrassment caused by the choices I made in the last year," Logue told Overstreet. "I take full responsibility for that."
Overstreet declined to reduce the sentence and reminded Logue the tampering charge was a second-degree felony that carries a 15-year maximum sentence.
"I appreciate that you have a concern for keeping your word with your child," Overstreet told him. "You need to look at it from the perspective that I do, that you're going to have a life with your child that will start in four years rather than 15."
The State Attorney's Office for the 14th Judicial Circuit cited a conflict of interest because of the office's contact with Logue in his capacity as an investigator. The case was prosecuted by Jennifer Lieb, an assistant state attorney from the 1st Judicial Circuit.
The plea deal resolves all the charges against Logue, said Graham, who also noted that because he pleaded to battery rather than sexual battery he will not be required to register as a sex offender.
"We were able to dodge a bullet on that with the plea we worked out," Graham said.
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Copyright (c) 2011, The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.
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