JESSE PIERCE
WESTFIELD – After eight years avoiding warrants for sexual assault charges, an area native has returned to the jurisdiction of Westfield District Court and is being held on unusually high bail pending further action on the charges filed by city police in 2004.
Jesse A. Pierce, 41, most recently of 5 Meadow St., appeared in Westfield District Court before Judge Rita Koenigs for arraignment on charges including indecent assault and battery in two separate cases. Koenigs ordered that he be held on $10,000 cash bail for each case pending a hearing Oct. 30.
In setting bail, Koenigs noted that Pierce “sexually assaulted and slapped the mother of his children, having broken into her home” and also cited his record of previous convictions which, she wrote, include “prior indecent A&B – homicide, and failure to register as a sex offender.”
She also noted that, in 2004, Pierce “left town knowing these charges were imminent.”
The imminent charges Koenigs referenced resulted from two incidents in June and July, 2004.
The two incidents were investigated by Westfield Det. Roxanne Bradley who alleged that, in June, a city resident returned to her home to find Pierce there.
Bradley reported that Pierce “usually gains entrance through an unlocked door or through a window” and, on the date in question, slapped the woman before pinning her to her bed and demanding sex. When he was refused, Bradley charged, he again slapped the woman.
In July, Bradley claimed, a 10-year-old female victim told her grandmother that she awoke while she was sleeping in her mother’s bed to find Pierce touching her buttocks.
Bradley filed a complaint in October, 2004, but a warrant she obtained was not served before Pierce left the area.
Pierce apparently went to Florida when he left the Commonwealth but it seems he jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire as, by 2006, he was again before the bar where he was charged with failure to register as a sex offender and for attempted second degree murder.
The Florida court found that Pierce had been convicted, in 1993, on a charge of indecent assault and battery on a person younger than 14 years of age in Hampden County Superior Court and that he had failed to register as a sex offender in Florida.
Convicted on both Florida charges in June, 2007, Pierce was incarcerated there until Sept. 30, 2012, when he was released from Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Milton, Florida.
Four days later he was in Westfield District Court where he was arraigned on charges of indecent assault and battery on a person older than 14 years-of-age, indecent assault and battery on a person younger than 14 years-of-age, assault and battery and breaking and entering a building with intent to commit a felony resulting from the two incidents in 2004.
As a defendant previously convicted of indecent assault and battery on a person younger than 14 years-of-age, Pierce is liable for a minimum 15-year sentence without the possibility of a suspended sentence, probation or parole. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 265 Section 13B3/4 further stipulates that a convict may not receive any deduction from his sentence for good conduct before he has served a full 15 years in prison.
