This time, there was no lambasting from the judge.
This time, there were no outrageous comments about women, sex and ethnicity.
And this time, a former Jacksonville doctor was sentenced to 10 years in prison instead of 20 for soliciting a child on the Internet and traveling to meet a minor for sex.
“I’m guilty of every word that I wrote and said,” Irfan Nawaz told Circuit Judge David Gooding on Tuesday. “I sincerely apologize to you and to anyone in this country. ... I put shame on myself and my family.”
Nawaz, who practiced internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic and St. Luke’s Hospital, was
arrested in 2008 after investigators tracked him to St. Cloud, where he’d gone to meet a detective posing as a 15-year-old girl.
In his confession to an Osceola County detective, he laughed at how stupid and promiscuous American women are.
“I thank God that I did not marry anyone from this country, who are that sexually hungry and who want that many stupid things to be done to them by a stupid stranger,” he said on the tape.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year to the maximum 20 years by Circuit Judge John Merrett, who was outraged by Nawaz’s comments. Merrett called him a degenerate, hypocrite and bigot and added, “On behalf of my countrywomen, I join you in thanking God that you did not marry an American woman.”
But the 1st District Court of Appeal ordered a new sentence,
ruling in January that Merrett’s comments went too far when he referred to Nawaz’s Pakistani national origin. The court said that cannot be a basis for a tougher sentence.
In court Tuesday, Nawaz was far more contrite. He told Gooding he would spend the rest of his life praying to “wash that filth that I was once swimming in.” He said he sought forgiveness and mercy from Allah, the court and the United States.
Gooding told him he hopes he finds forgiveness.
“I don’t think anyone doubts that the apology was sincere,” Gooding told him.
Nawaz’s appeals attorney, Hank Coxe, argued for an even lighter sentence. He said Nawaz voluntarily assisted the State Attorney’s Office last week with information about an unsolved crime.
Additionally, he reminded Gooding that Nawaz has lost his profession, will be deported to Pakistan immediately upon release and has no visitors because his wife and young son returned to Pakistan after his arrest. Nawaz has never seen his 3-year-old son, who was born about a month after his arrest.
“Dr. Nawaz’s circumstances are different from everybody else’s,” Coxe said.
But prosecutor Maureen Horkan of the Attorney General’s Child Predator CyberCrime Unit said Nawaz would have had multiple victims had there not been detectives posing as virgin teenage girls. The crime is no different, she said, than if Nawaz had solicited underage girls at the mall. Additionally, she said, Nawaz instructed the potential victims how to destroy evidence of their incriminating computer chats.
Horkan agreed with Gooding that Nawaz’s apology was sincere. But she asked for 10 years in prison followed by five years on sex offender probation.
Gooding agreed with her recommendation, even though he acknowledged Nawaz likely will be deported before he can begin the probation.
