photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Quortez Longfellow Coleman is pictured at his sentencing hearing Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in Douglas County District Court.

A three-time sex offender will serve nearly six years in prison after a Douglas County judge on Wednesday rejected a public defender’s request that his client be put on probation.

The attorney, Angelo Panas-Cabrera, argued – with the help of three psychology experts – that sex offender Quortez Longfellow Coleman would be better served living in and getting treatment in the Lawrence community rather than going to prison, even though they said he had an “above-average” chance of re-offending. With an intensive regimen of services tailored to his specific needs, he could likely beat those odds, they said.

Prosecutor Todd Hiatt, meanwhile, argued that justice was not simply about serving the defendant’s needs.

“We have a criminal justice system that includes punishment for hurting other people,” Hiatt said, while noting that psychologists are not “fortune-tellers” when it comes to whether or not someone will re-offend.

“Justice in this case is putting a three-time sex offender in prison,” he added, saying that Coleman supplied alcohol to a girl, then sexually abused her at length after she was vomiting and black-out drunk – refusing to stop when she was eventually sober enough to object.

The defense had in earlier proceedings argued that the encounter was consensual and had even tried to “pierce the rape shield,” as Hiatt put it, calling the defense strategy “victim blaming at its worst.” Rape shield laws are intended to prevent a victim’s sexual history from being admitted at trial.

Coleman was originally charged with the off-grid felony of aggravated indecent liberties with a child between the ages of 14 and 16 for the May 2021 offense, but he pleaded no contest five years later to a reduced charge of aggravated sexual battery.

Before that, he was convicted in December of 2020 in connection with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of lewd and lascivious behavior, stemming from two cases that were filed when he was a juvenile. He was sentenced in February 2021 to nine months of intensive supervised probation and was ordered to follow any recommendations that resulted from clinical assessments and a psychosexual evaluation. Three months later he committed the May 2021 crime.

The victim, now 20, told Judge Stacey Donovan on Wednesday that she was scarred by Coleman’s sexual abuse, which she said left her with panic attacks, suicidal thoughts and difficulty with intimacy.

“I want him to get jail time instead of probation so that I can feel safer,” she said while crying, “and so that he has time to think about what he did.”

Panas-Cabrera and his experts argued that Coleman suffered from an intellectual disability, with an IQ in the mid-60s, and had significant mental health needs that made it difficult for him to function in daily life without support. Now in his mid-20s, he has never held a full-time job.

One expert, clinical counselor Vicki Condra-Williams, testified that Coleman’s verbal comprehension ability was “extremely low,” meaning he had difficulty understanding words. But when Hiatt asked if he was able to understand the word “no,” she agreed that he was.

“Everybody can understand no,” Hiatt later reiterated to the court, and if Coleman could not understand no, then he would surely not understand the treatment regimen that the defense was urging for him.

Under the state sentencing guidelines, Coleman was looking at 114 to 128 months in prison. The plea agreement said that the state would ask for 70 months, but on Wednesday the state changed its request to 128 months, or more than 10 years, because while on bond Coleman had been pulled over without proper ID or proof of insurance. He was legally required to have ID with his offender status on it.

Donovan, while rejecting the dispositional departure to probation, did find substantial and compelling reasons to grant a durational departure down to the 70 months originally contemplated in the plea agreement – namely that Coleman’s criminal history was from when he was a juvenile, that he had a severe intellectual disability and that he taken responsibility by entering a plea.

She agreed that probation with intensive tailored services would ideally serve Coleman better, but she said she also had to consider the “immediate safety of the community.”

In addition to the nearly six years in prison, Coleman will also be on lifetime post-release supervision. Donovan ordered sex offender treatment for Coleman, but it’s not clear when that will happen since such treatment is not currently available in prison.

When given an opportunity to speak, Coleman said, “I’m sorry for the pain I have caused.”

He said he was working on bettering himself and that if Donovan gave him probation, “I will do well.”