Man’s request to cut 5-year prison sentence denied

Superior Court Associate Judge Teresa K. Kim-Tenorio has denied a motion to reduce the sentence imposed on Jing Song Lin, a 50-year-old storeowner who was slapped with a five-year prison term for touching the breast and buttocks of a 13-year-old girl in 2012.

In an order Tuesday, Kim-Tenorio found no merit in Lin’s claim that the sentencing judge, Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho, failed to provide specific findings on how the maximum sentence would serve the interest of justice.

Kim-Tenorio said the sentencing court took into account the punishment goals of rehabilitation, deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation.

The judge said the sentencing court noted Lin’s remorse and acceptance of responsibility but also stressed the need to deter Lin and others in the community from committing similar offenses, the need to punish for the sake of punishment, and the need to remove defendant from the community to keep him from committing criminal offenses.

Kim-Tenorio noted that Lin’s punishment is five years in prison, but the consequences that the victim suffers may well last longer, perhaps even for her entire lifetime.

Camacho sentenced Lin in March to the full maximum of five years in prison, without parole, probation, early release or weekend release, for one count of sexual abuse of a child in the third degree. Lin was also directed to register as a sex offender.

Camacho said the full maximum sentence is appropriate and just as this case involves the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl.

On May 21, 2014, attorney Viola Alepuyo, who appeared as counsel for Lin, asked for a reduction in the sentence. Camacho recused himself because of his family relation with Alepuyo.

The matter was then assigned to Kim-Tenorio, who heard the motion last Aug. 19. Assistant attorney general Margo Brown-Badawy represented the government.

To justify reducing Lin’s prison sentence, Alepuyo cited several factors: the financial and emotional hardship on Lin’s family, his lack of citations at the Department of Corrections that shows good behavior, his remorse and acceptance of responsibility, a civil settlement of $80,000 to the victim’s family, and the victim’s father’s subsequent lack of opposition to leniency, among other things.

According to a report prepared by police officer Rudolfo Hermosilla, police officers responded to LF Market in Chalan Kanoa in July 2012 after receiving a call about a sexual assault incident.

Hermosilla found that a girl entered the store to buy cookies. Lin offered the girl a soda then hugged her and touched her breast with clothing.

The surveillance camera in the store caught the incident.