Marquardt sentencing delayed
A sentencing hearing scheduled for Monday, July 30, in the case against Edward N. Marquardt, 60, was postponed. The former Marion teacher pleaded no contest on March 26 to two felony counts of repeated sexual assault of a child. Since then, his sentencing hearing has been rescheduled twice. According to court records, Marquardt’s defense counsel, Edmund Jelinski, has asked Judge John Hoffmann not to allow prosecutors to introduce statements by a witness who was not named in the criminal complaint. In a July 13 letter to Hoffmann, Jelinski said that he learned just 15 minutes prior to the March sentencing that a witness planned to make a statement regarding his experiences with Marquardt at a camp in the late 1980s or early 1990s. "I find it disingenuous that the State is attempting to introduce information to the Court at a Sentencing Hearing from a third party who has no bearing on the case at hand," Jelinski wrote. "I believe that such a witness would be highly prejudicial, inflammatory, unnecessary and inappropriate." Assistant District Attorney Brenda Freeman responded in a July 19 letter to the judge that state law provides that victims may or may not choose to make statements at sentencing hearings. She said prosecutors do not always know whether they will testify in advance and under state law, victims can decide to testify "any time prior to the Court pronouncing sentence." Freeman also noted that the court may allow any other person to make a statement at sentencing if it is relevant to the case. At Marquardt’s plea hearing in March, Hoffmann had granted Jelinski’s request for an alternate pre-sentence investigation (PSI) by the defense in addition to the PSI done by the Department of Corrections. Freeman said in her letter that there were differences in what Marquardt told the investigators who prepared the two PSIs. "The defendant obviously was not as honest and forthcoming with the DOC pre-sentence investigator about his prior offenses, prior history and prior inappropriate and unhealthy sexual experiences," Freeman said. She argued that Marquardt’s behavior prior to the incidents that led to his conviction was relevant to his sentencing. A motion hearing in Marquardt’s case is now scheduled for Sept. 17 and sentencing for Oct. 1.
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