Webb seeks to skip hearing, should hear ‘the human cost of his crime,’ prosecutor says
It is clear that Michael Webb cannot be kept from the courtroom on Thursday, when the course of his life is to be decided. But can he stay away?
That will be the question before U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor when he sentences Webb, who abducted and sexually assaulted an 8-year-old girl in Fort Worth in May.
In the hours before a jury was to be selected in late September, Webb decided not to attend his trial. He was vexed with O’Connor’s prior ruling allowing video of Webb’s interview with police to be shown to the jury and disagreed with his attorneys on other matters. He arrived in the courtroom in a jumpsuit uniform rather than the standard street clothes. After O’Connor ruled that the trial would move ahead, Webb waived his right to be present and spent the first day elsewhere in the downtown Fort Worth building.
The jury deliberated the next day for about 10 minutes before it found him guilty of kidnapping.
It appears that Webb would also like to stay outside the courtroom during the sentencing hearing. He filed a notice last week in which he waived his right to be present.
O’Connor must discuss Webb’s sentencing rights with him in person, according to a filing the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas submitted on Wednesday.
Sentencing is often a time for a victim or his or her relatives to describe the crime and their emotions and know that the defendant is listening.
In the filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aisha Saleem wrote that she anticipates that the parents of the girl Webb abducted will speak. O’Connor “should require the defendant to hear the human cost of his crime,” Saleem wrote.
“While the defendant has a right to be present at sentencing, he has no right to be absent,” she wrote.
When the sentencing hearing begins Thursday, O’Connor will consider an argument from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Webb should serve life in prison.
Webb’s attorneys are expected to seek a significantly lower sentence.
In his notice, Webb writes that federal criminal procedure rules allow him to remain outside the courtroom during the sentencing hearing because he properly waived his right to be present for his trial just prior to jury selection.
The victim was walking with her mother on May 18 when Webb pulled her into a Ford Five Hundred registered to his mother.
Webb left his car, grabbed the girl and pushed her through the driver’s door into the passenger seat.
Webb abducted the girl at about 6:30 p.m and arrived at a Forest Hill hotel at 8:30 p.m. The two hours in between were spent in the car in an empty parking lot, he has said.
About six hours after the victim was abducted, a Forest Hill police sergeant searched the bathroom, under the bed and in the refrigerator in Webb’s room. He left when he did not find the girl.
Webb had directed the girl to get in a storage container and covered her with his dirty clothes.
On a second trip to the hotel, law enforcement officers again knocked on Webb’s door and twice used a ram before Webb opened it.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
