TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – A Florida bill, intended to prohibit the release of sexual offenders on bail while they await sentencing, was filed Tuesday.
“Missy’s Law,” filed by Representative Sam Greco, is named after 5-year-old Missy Mogle, who was found unresponsive at a southeast Tallahassee home in May.
Since then, her mom, Chloe Spencer, and stepdad, Daniel Spencer, were both arrested after being accused of cruelly neglecting and abusing the young girl.
Missy’s grandmother, Pepper Mogle, remembers her granddaughter as a happy child.
“She was very loving. She always had a smile on her face,” Mogle said. “She always was laughing and just so cheerful and didn’t want anything bad. She just wanted the happy times.”
The legislation wrote that it would be “requiring a court to remand a person found guilty of a dangerous crime to custody immediately” and that person would have to remain in custody while awaiting sentencing or further proceedings without the possibility of being released on bond.
Dangerous crimes include arson, child abuse, elderly abuse, murder and sexual battery.
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The 5-year-old’s death caused shock and outrage across the Capital City, part of which was due to the fact that her stepdad was out on bond while awaiting sentencing for child sex crimes at the time of Missy’s death.
Mogle is glad something is being done in the legislature.
“They’re finally wanting to do more and not just keep putting it onto the back burner and letting it slide under the carpet,” Mogle said. “I just want justice for Missy.”
Just a month after the young girl died, Florida Attorney James Uthmeier proposed the law in Missy’s name.
In October, the Leon County Commission unanimously supported Missy’s Law before even seeing the text, saying the law is necessary to prevent judges from allowing convicted sex offenders to be out on bond once they’re found guilty.
There will likely be a Senate version of the bill, as well.
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