Orville Lee Wollard III - Florida

State: Florida
Sentence: 20 years
Offense: Aggravated assault with a weapon without intent to kill; shooting into a dwelling; child abuse without great harm
Priors: DUI (1980)
Year sentenced: 2009
Age at sentencing: 53
Projected release date: July 13, 2028
 
Orville has worked his entire life to better himself. After earning an Associate’s degree, he got a Bachelor’s degree in Business. He attended night school while maintaining a full-time job to earn his Master’s degree in Business Management and Organizational Behavior. He has been employed as everything from being a computer technician with the Home Shopping Network to managing a photo processing lab. In all of his positions, Orville was quickly promoted because of his strong work ethic.
 
In 2008, 53-year-old Orville was living happily with his wife, Sandy, and their two daughters in Florida. He held a steady job as a human resources specialist at Sea World. Unfortunately, Sandy became very ill with serious heart problems. Their youngest daughter began acting out, using drugs and running away with her older boyfriend for days at a time. The boy, a local drug dealer, was known for his lengthy criminal record and violent outbursts. It wasn’t long before he began to abuse Orville’s daughter, punching and yelling at her, and stealing prescription pills, jewelry and money from the family’s home. Orville did his best to try to help his daughter while caring for his wife and maintaining his job. He called the police repeatedly and issued Amber Alerts when his daughter would disappear. Unfortunately, the authorities told him they could not do anything to stop the boyfriend, as he was a minor.
 
On May 14, Orville received a panicked call at work from his wife, who reported that the boy was at their home causing trouble. He hurriedly returned to the house, where he found the boy on the porch and his daughter with a black eye. When Orville told him to leave, the boyfriend attacked him, ripping out stitches from Orville’s recent surgery, and ran off with his daughter. The two returned several hours later and the boy began shoving Orville’s daughter around the Wollards’ home. She cried as Sandy and the eldest daughter screamed for Orville to help.
 
Angry and scared for his family’s safety, Orville felt helpless. The boy had already outmatched him in a physical fight and the police had said multiple times they could do nothing about the situation. Orville took his legally registered pistol and confronted the boy in the living room, again asking him to leave. The boyfriend stopped assaulting Orville’s daughter and came into the living room. He punched a hole in the wall, smiled at Orville, and began moving towards him. Orville, who had firearms training as a former member of the auxiliary police force, shot a bullet into the wall next to the boyfriend to scare him. No one was hurt and the boy finally left.  Orville’s daughter was later admitted to a hospital after attempting suicide. Several days later, Orville was arrested - the boyfriend had called the police to report him for aggravated assault.
 
Orville spent a year in county jail on a $285,000 bond. Believing he was within his rights to defend his family with a legally registered firearm, Orville rejected a plea deal for five years of probation and pled not guilty. At trial, Orville was not allowed bring up the many problems the Wollard family had experienced with the boyfriend; he was only permitted to say the boy was “no longer welcome” at his home. The jury rejected Orville’s self-defense claim and found him guilty of possessing and discharging a firearm, triggering Florida’s 20-year mandatory minimum for aggravated assault with a weapon.
 
The officer who prepared Orville’s sentencing score sheet begged the government to recognize the extenuating circumstances of the case.  Additionally, the investigating officer stated that he believed Orville’s daughter and the boyfriend had used this incident solely to get back at Orville for trying to keep them apart. Unfortunately, Judge Donald Jacobsen had no choice but to sentence Orville to two decades behind bars. Judge Jacobsen said:
 
This [sentence] is obviously excessive…if it weren’t for the mandatory minimum…I would use my discretion and impose some separate sentence, having taken into consideration the circumstances of the event, but I think I am duty-bound to apply the law as it has been enacted by the legislature.
 
He sentenced Orville to 33 months for the charge of shooting into a dwelling (Orville’s own home) and 33 months for child abuse (because the boyfriend was a minor) to run concurrently.
 
After Orville’s incarceration, the Wollard family split up. Sandy and Orville’s younger daughter were forced to move in with relatives in Wisconsin after their home went into foreclosure. He has not seen them once since his imprisonment. In an interview with a local paper, Sandy said, “I am just crushed. I depended on him for a lot of things. He is my best friend.” Both of Orville’s daughters, now 18 and 20, and the boyfriend wrote letters to Governor Rick Scott begging him to overturn Orville’s 20-year mandatory sentence.
 
On the day of his sentencing, Orville spoke before the Court:
 
I’m amazed. I’m stunned. I have spent my life pursuing education [and] helped the community. [T]hen one day this person breaks into my house…he continues to do this, he assaults my daughter, he threatens me, I protect myself. [N]o one is injured in this whole thing and I’m going to prison and the drug dealer’s on the street. And again, with all respect to [the Court], I would expect this from the former Soviet Union…not the United States.