COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – A twenty-five-year game of hide-and-seek with law enforcement and the judicial system has come to an end end in a Coldwater courtroom this week.
Forty-nine-year-old Jesus Hernandez was sentenced in Branch County Circuit Court, closing a case that has remained open since the turn of the millennium. Hernandez originally vanished in 2001 after posting a ten-thousand-dollar bond on criminal sexual conduct charges out of Bronson involving a then fourteen-year-old girl. After decades on the run, police finally caught up with him last July on an outstanding warrant.
During the hearing, Hernandez made a final, desperate plea for a pardon, claiming he had lived a quiet, law-abiding life in Orland, Indiana, where he eventually married and started a family.
However, Special Visiting Judge Amy Ronayne Krause informed him during sentencing she had no authority to grant such a request.
Hernandez will now serve the remainder his jail sentence in Branch County. Once that time is up, , he will be handed over to federal authorities for deportation to Mexico.
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