Prioritizing Florida Justice

Pretend you're in charge of ranking perps for arrest and prosecution--it could happen--and allocating resources to take them down.  Here are a couple of actual cases currently being discussed in the somewhat less than hallowed halls of Florida's criminal justice system.  Your task is to prioritize them.

Case 1:  In 1987, a sorry piece of fecal debris named Terry Rugg was sentenced to probation in Sarasota County on a child sex abuse charge.  Six years later, in January, 1993, a mother called the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office to report that her 14-year-old son had been sexually molested while living as a runaway with Rugg in Largo.  According to the boy, Rugg also provided him and his friends with booze and pot.  Subsequent interviews with the boy's friends confirmed his account and also revealed another victim of Rugg's perversion.

Detectives phoned Rugg.  I can pretty much imagine the conversation:

"Yeah, this is Terry Rugg.  Who's this?"

"This is the Sheriff's Office.  We got a donut break coming up in a short; otherwise we'd come out to talk with you.  How 'bout you comin in, instead?"

"Well, whut's this all about, anyhow?"

"Oh, just some boys were telling us how you were playin' around with their privates and such, maybe giving them a little toot and a toke once in a while."

"Why, them little...uh, okay, Sheriff, how 'bout if I come down in the a.m.?  I'm rat in the middle of a Honey Boo Boo marathon, know whut I mean?"

"That'd be good, Terry.  See you then."

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise!  Good ol' boy Terry didn't show.  Not only that, he disappeared.

After a warrant was issued for his arrest, New Jersey officials called to say Rugg had been arrested on a marijuana trafficking charge.  They asked if Pinellas authorities wanted to extradite him.  "Nah," said chief assistant prosecutor Bruce Bartlett.  "Glad he's there and not here.  Too much paperwork to bring him back, don'tcha know."

Eventually, Terry came back on his own and moved in with his mother.  In spite of the arrest warrant being in the system for almost two decades, and in spite of arrests for traffic violations, writing a bad check, and being jailed twice on drug charges, he avoided arrest on the sex charges.  Until three months ago, when he was pulled over for having an expired tag.

"Ain't my fault they didn't get me afore," said Terry.  "They knew where I was.  They knew how to find me."

Case 2:  Eric Prokopi is a paleontologist.  He goes around finding prehistoric bones and reassembles them.  A skeleton of a giant sloth stands menacingly in front of his home.

Eric was busted for making false statements to customs officials and illegally transporting dinosaur bones from Mongolia to his home in Gainesville.  He used the bones to virtually restore a Tyrannosaurus bataar, bones that may have ended up in a soup kettle over a yak dung fire in front of a yurt had he not rescued them.

So.  Who's the greater threat to civilization, here--Terry, who gave free rein to his inner Jerry Sandusky, or Eric, a Dr Alan Grant wannabe?

A no-brainer, right?  Ah, but this is Florida, where smarts and common sense are not exactly prerequisites to justice.  Eric's indiscretion created an international incident and brought down the wrath of the Chinese government, State Department, Museum of Natural History, Homeland Security and, of course, Pasco County officials.  Terry only upset the mother of a runaway pothead.

Eric is looking at a max of 17 years in the slam.  Due to a statute of limitations, Terry is looking at nothing.
You understand...don't you?