By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
An illegal immigrant convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in a Princeton playground in 2005 was sentenced Friday to 25 years in state prison.
"It’s over," said Mary Lessard after seeing her attacker, Humberto Gonzalez, receive his punishment. Ms. Lessard, a Princeton resident who was 53 at the time of the rape, agreed to have her name disclosed in the media.
Mr. Gonzalez’s penalty — 25 years for kidnapping and eight years for the sex assault to run concurrently — was less than what the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office had been seeking. Assistant Prosecutor Michael Borgos asked Mercer County Superior Court Judge Pedro J. Jimenez Jr., sitting in Trenton, to give Mr. Gonzalez 28 years for kidnapping and nine years for the rape, both to run consecutive, or back to back.
He told the judge how Mr. Gonzalez grabbed Ms. Lessard, out for a late night walk, on a bike path along Guyot Avenue on May 22, 2005, threatened her with a folding knife and dragged her to the playground. He urged the judge to give the stiffest sentence possible so that Mr. Gonzalez "does not do this to anyone else."
Defense lawyer Malaeika Montgomery countered by asking the judge to consider Mr. Gonzalez’s youthfulness in rendering his punishment. He was 17 at the time, although authorities suspect that he was lying about his true age.
Ms. Montgomery added Ms. Lessard’s only physical injury was a scrape on her left knee during a sexual encounter that Mr. Gonzalez said was consensual.
Mr. Gonzalez, requiring interpreters to translate for him during the sentencing, declined the judge’s offer to say something on his behalf.
The judge, ultimately, declined to run the two sentences back to back.
"The judge gave him what he thought was just," Mr. Borgos said outside court.
Mr. Gonzalez, believed to be 27 years old, must do 85 percent of his 25-year-sentence before becoming parole eligible. He received 1,599 days of jail credit that will shorten his stay in prison. He is "most likely" going to appeal his conviction, Ms. Montgomery said outside court.
A little more than nine years has gone by since Ms. Lessard was raped and Mr. Gonzalez was sent to prison for the crime. In between was the ordeal she and her family went through, first getting through the initial impact of the crime, waiting years for her attacker to finally be identified and then facing him again at trial in May.
Mr. Gonzalez, originally from Guatemala, had been living on Witherspoon Street.
Mr. Gonzalez left Princeton, but he got into trouble in Texas for an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. That would turn out to be a huge break for law enforcement back in Mercer County.
Sentenced in 2009 to two years in a Texas prison, he was required to give a DNA sample — a positive hit for authorities in New Jersey. In her statement to the judge, Ms. Lessard recalled the knock on her door from the detective telling her the news.
As the case progressed, Mr. Gonzalez had spurned prior plea bargain offers, one calling for five years and another calling for 10. Waived up to adult court, he stood trial this year and was convicted on May 9.
He will serve his prison term in New Jersey and then ultimately be deported, never to be allowed back into the country. Technically, he will be a Megan’s law sex offender, one of the consequences of his conviction.
Ms. Lessard came to the courthouse in Trenton with her husband, taking a seat on a front-row bench opposite the defense table where Mr. Gonzalez sat. She was joined by former assistant prosecutor Robin Scheiner, who tried the case, and Mary Effie Gunther, a victim witness advocate in the prosecutor’s office.
Ms. Scheiner delayed her retirement from the prosecutor’s office until Ms. Lessard’s case was over.
