Athlete Jaylin Michael Lawson, 17, of 65826 Union Rd., Cassopolis, was sentenced Friday morning for the larceny of a personal watercraft last summer from Andrew and Linda Noetzel at Park Shore Marina on Diamond Lake.
Lawson, a senior at Ross Beatty High School, “stepped off the cliff in a major way” when he swiped Jet Skis on two occasions July 1 and 2, Prosecutor Victor Fitz said.
“This is probably the tip of the iceberg,” Fitz said, noting Lawson, to his discredit, initially lied to a marine officer.
Lawson’s attorney, Philip Harrison, went to school with the defendant’s parents and said, “This is not the way he was brought up. All of a sudden he got stupid.”
Harrison said there was no long-term plan. The only intent was to ride around, for which “there’s no excuse and he knows it.”
His pastor wrote him a letter of support and the court also received newspaper clippings about his sports exploits to review.
With a bright future, Lawson’s family “wants him to get his head right” and graduate, Harrison said, asking for a probationary sentence. Lawson, with no prior record, apologized for his mistake and vowed nothing like this would happen again, since he is no longer friends with those who made bad decisions.
“I hope you’re successful,” Dodge said.
What some might regard as a “youthful indiscretion,” Dodge said, raises “character issues” and could have potentially saddled him with a felony conviction that could prove detrimental to advancing education or job prospects.
Since the prosecution convicted Lawson of one theft, the judge said he could try to have it expunged in five yearss before a different judge.
So, Dodge turned to the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, a state law which allows him to place a youth between 17 and 20 on probation without a conviction to avoid a criminal record.
Dodge gave Lawson two years probation and 90 days in jail suspended for one year, with credit for three days served. He must pay $582.63 restitution and court assessments at the rate of $25 a month while in school.