Retirement isn’t dulling the admonitory edge of Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in his role as senior judge. In a pair of rulings today, Perkins denied bond to two men, one accused of brutalizing his wife after she denied him sex, the other awaiting sentencing on a jury conviction for a hit-and-run crash that left the victim mangled and unable to work for months.
“I’ve never granted a pre-trial detention motion on a third-degree felony. I am today,” Perkins said of the domestic violence case. For a judge who served 10 years on the bench between Volusia and Flagler counties, that was saying something.
Michael Patrick Adams has been held at the county jail since last Thursday on no bond after his first appearance before County Judge Andrea Totten. Assistant State Attorney Tara Libby filed a motion to keep Adams in jail until the disposition of his case. Robert Rawlings, the attorney representing Adams, was contesting.
Adams, 35, of Palm Coast, was arrested on three third-degree felony charges last Thursday when, allegedly high on crack, his 39-year-old wife of a year accused him of strangling her to the point that she passed out after she’d declined to be intimate with him just then. She’d faked unconsciousness before, to make him stop being violent toward her. This time she said she really passed out.
She escaped the house when she regained consciousness and managed to contact his parents. He used his phone to locate her and drag her back inside, taking her phone. When she escaped again and hid in the car, he attempted to use a device to open the car door, and again took her back inside against her will. When his parents arrived, she ran to a neighbor, who took her to the Flagler Beach pier, where she met with law enforcement.
If that were all, Perkins might have set a high bond. But Flagler County Sheriff’s detective Hayleigh Prentiss, who focuses on domestic violence cases, testified. She’d responded to AdventHealth Palm Coast to speak with the alleged victim. “From what she told me it was on a weekly basis,” Prentiss said of the violence. In ine incident when she’d been strangled and unconscious, “when she woke up, there was narcotics being stuck into her anal cavity, along with other aspects of sexual assault in his genitals being other places.”
“Other places, meaning whether it’s her mouth or vagina,” the prosecutor asked.
“Yes.” Adams had a previous arrest in 2023, in similar circumstances, with the same victim. He pleaded. Adjudication was withheld. His probation was terminated early–on June 17, with the victim’s agreement.
Both incidents involved firearms, which Adams has a habit of carrying around in the house, the detective said.
“Every time that I wanted to discuss kind of what occurred that evening,” Prentiss said of her conversation with Adams, “he said that he did not want to incriminate himself, and that he becomes a bit different person when he is on narcotics.”
His wife testified today, saying she would favor a treatment program for him. But she also said she was afraid of him when he acted as he had that night. Adams, in his testimony, said he was the sole provider in his home was losing money.
“Though some of the allegations are a little more extreme, if you will, than the ones we normally see with domestic violence,” Rawlings, his attorney, told the court, they “really are all kind of the same thing. I don’t think that pre-trial detention was put in place to put people that are charged with third-degree felonies in jail without a bond, except in the most extreme circumstances.”
The history and the testimony was too much for Perkins. If he granted bond, “We’re going to be right back here in a worse position than we would have been. So my first instinct is, let’s not make this any worse,” the judge said. Perkins also recommended intensive, in-patient drug treatment for Adams. That takes time to secure. When it is arranged, the order could be modified. “He clearly needs treatment, and he’s crying out for it,” Perkins said.
The second denial of bond was in the case of Joao Fernandes, the 50-year-old Palm Coast man whom a jury in mid-July found guilty of hit-and-run, leaving a motorcyclist severely injured on a shoulder of Belle Terre Parkway. Fernandes had turned down a plea deal that would have required him to spend a year in prison. He now faces up to 15 years, though hsi sentence, on Sept. 4, is not likely to come close to that.
Fernandes’s attorney, Brian Penney, pleaded with Perkins today that Fernandes had not been able to set his affairs in order before the sentencing, and that he would not be a flight risk if he were released on bond. Perkins had revoked bond immediately after the verdict.
Libby made an unusual argument to keep Fernandes in jail until sentencing: “Mr. Fernandez could get into a car accident and then not be able to attend sentencing,” Libby told the judge. “There are a lot of different things, not just his family and his work that needs him, but he’s safe in the jail, so we know he’s going to be there. We know he’s not going anywhere.” Only then she reminded the judge that Fernandes had left the victim injured on the side of the road, and that the victim spent almost a month in the hospital and longer unable to work.
“He needs to remain in custody pending sentencing like almost every defendant that we have gone to trial with,” Libby said.
Perkins had presided over the trial. He wasn’t surprised by the motion for bond. But it didn’t change his mind. He was denying it. “The bigger picture, honestly, is sentencing,” Perkins said. “We’re talking about a period of a few weeks between now and sentencing that pales in comparison to what we’re talking about.”
Perkins said he was expecting very different requests–prison time from the prosecution, no prison time and only probation from the defense. The attorneys did not contradict him. He left open the possibility of resetting the sentencing hearing to an earlier date, once the pre-sentence investigation (PSI) is in hand. A PSI is a comprehensive history–personal, criminal, professional–that can influence a sentence’s duration.
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