Judge suspends jail time

Special to the Press
By Doug Thompson

Through a plea bargain in Floyd County Circuit Court Tuesday, a County man avoided jail time on charges of molesting a 15-year-old boy earlier this year.
Gilbert Luther Collins received a 5-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of sexual battery under a deal between Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon Hannett and defense attorney Robert W. Spessard.
Collins admitted fondling the boy in a Floyd County trailer park in March of this year and told investigators that he “needed counseling.”
In suspending the 5-year prison sentence Judge Ray W. Grubbs placed Collins on three years supervised probation, ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service and fined him $1,000 but then suspended $500 of the fine. The deal did not require Collins to register as a sexual offender.
The agreement was the second plea bargain in a week that allowed a sexual offender to avoid jail time. Former Floyd Elementary School teacher Daniel Farmer received a suspended sentence last week after a felony charge was dropped through a plea bargain and a second charge was reduced to sexual battery for his sexual relationship with a 15-year-old Floyd County High School female student.
While Collins went home, Gregory Wayne Rupe, convicted earlier this year on six counts of breaking and entering, five counts of grand larceny and one count of petty larceny, received a jail sentence of 30 years on all charges but Grubb suspended all but 7 years, 4 months.
Rebecca Rupe, the defendant’s mother, wiped away tears as she told the court that she had now appeared to ask the court to give her son a break “three or four times,” then read aloud a letter saying her son, after previous convictions on charges that she blamed on his drug addiction, had “found God” and was “studying for the ministry.”
“I am so happy that he found God,” she told Grubbs. “I am just so sorry it came so late.”
In another plea bargain, David Randolph Scarberry entered guilty pleas to two felony drug charges after a third charge of possessing a firearm while carrying drugs was dropped. Grubbs fined Scarberry $500 for each of the felonies and imposed a 10 year suspended sentence on the charges. He also continued the suspension of his driver’s license for charges of driving under a suspended license and attempting to elude a police officer in a Nov. 2006 chase on U.S. 221 and Rte. 750 at speeds up to 96 miles per hour.