FOSTER-FURLOUGHED INMATE VANISHES

TAMPA - A Judge Criticized For Being Too Lenuient On Drug Defendants Lets
An Inmate Out Of Jail To Go To A funeral. He Doesn't Return.

Despite an $85,000 bail for a man charged with 17 counts of possession and
delivery of cocaine, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Florence Foster last week
signed an order allowing the inmate to attend his grandmother's funeral.

The only condition was that Roy Nathan return to the Orient Road Jail at 5
p.m. Saturday. Five o'clock came and went, and the 20-year-old Nathan never
returned.

"We know he did go to the funeral," said Hillsborough County sheriff's
spokeswoman Debbie Carter on Sunday night.

He spent Saturday night and most of Sunday a free man, but was arrested at
a Nebraska Avenue motel at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

Foster, who has been criticized by some prosecutors for being lenient,
especially with those mixed up in drugs, was in the news recently when she
ignored state sentencing guidelines in the case of Paul Hamill, 41.

While the guidelines called for two years in prison, Foster ordered the man
to serve two years community control and that he be admitted to a drug
treatment facility. She said Hamill was small, thin and white, and
certainly would be a sexual target if she sent him to prison.

Her comments raised the ire of prosecutors and the local NAACP.

Last week, the judge signed a furlough order for Nathan, allowing him to be
released from jail at 10 a.m. Saturday for his relative's funeral, Carter said.

"He failed to return, and arrest warrants were issued," she said.

Twenty-five-and-a-half hours after he was supposed to report back, Nathan
was arrested at the Red Roof Inn at Nebraska and 23rd avenues, Carter said.

Nathan, of 2722 N. Jefferson St., was arrested in March, records show, on
cocaine possession and delivery charges.

Deputies also arrested Nathan's girlfriend, Joyce Elisha Paris, 19, of 314
E. Gladys St., who was charged with being an accessory and resisting arrest.