A lawyer from Maryland, who also is a children’s balloon entertainer, is accused of traveling to Central Florida in the hopes of having sex with who he thought was a 14-year-old boy. He has asked a federal judge in Orlando to remove his plea agreement because he says he does not remember pleading in the case. He says he was also threatened to sign the legal document that detailed his guilty plea.
The man in question is Howard Scott Kalin. Kalin can be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. He filed a 46-page, hand-written motion on Thursday in Orlando federal court. The motion claims that he has a diminished mental capacity, malicious prosecution and ineffective counsel.
Last year is when he signed his plea agreement, which admitted that he went to Lake County in order to have sex with a boy that he met using an online advertisement. Well, he at least thought it was a boy. The entered the plea in front of a judge at a hearing.
The advertisement was posted by a Lake County sheriff’s detective on the section of ‘Men Seeking Men’ on the website Craigslist. The advertisement was labeled ‘bored nephew.’
Kalin responded to the advertisement while staying in Central Florida for a balloon artist convention, according to prosecutors. He then traded messages online with the detective, who posed as the uncle of the boy.
A meeting at a Clermont restaurant was arranged by Kalin between the two. On May 23 he traveled to Central Florida only to be arrested outside of the establishment. He then told the detectives that he wanted to aid the boy explore intimacy.
Kalin wrote about being suicidal, anxious, constantly crying while in jail and at court proceedings and stressed in his motion. Kalin claims that he has a diminished mental state and is “severely depressed and not emotionally stable.”
Kalin is now claiming that he did not enter his guilty plea in a “clear, informed, voluntary, educated manner, without pressure or coercion, did not possess a reasonable degree of rational or factual understanding as to the proceedings against him, and did not have effective assistance of counsel.”
Kalin claims that his attorney threatened him into signing the plea agreement. He also says that he has “no clear recollection of the plea hearing, no clear recollection of questions asked to defendant, no clear recollection of defendant’s responses, if any, and absolutely no conscious recollection of any matter discussed during this hearing.”
17 You have a number of
18 communications between this defendant and an undercover
19 officer either posing as an uncle or a 14—year—old nephew
20 where the defendant describes in vivid detail the sexual
21 acts he’d like to perform on the child, how he would groom
22 the child, how he would get the child to the point of being
23 willing to have sex with an adult. You have an admission.
24 You have statements that I suggest would be helpful for the
25 prosecution post Miranda.
1 Child pornography was found both in his office as well
2 a locked storage shed that was held in his name.
3 And you know that this charge carries a minimum of ten years
4 in prison up to life.
5 You know he has no connections with Florida. He has
6 the means to travel. Just six days before he traveled
7 through Orlando for what he believed was a rendezvous with a
8 14 year old for sex, he purchased a plane ticket.
9 He’s also an extreme danger to other people. He sought
1O in this case to have sex with a minor and he did that over a
11 course of several months, consistently through over 100
12 communications of every means, text message, chat logs,
13 phone calls that were recorded, e—mails.
14 He writes stories about having sex with minors. He
15 says they’re based on true events, although not completely
16 true.
17 He stated to the undercover that he believed the age of
18 consent for a minor boy was too high. And that a 14 year
19 old would know what he’s doing.
20 He also has copious amounts of child pornography that
21 he was feeding his mind with, over a thousand images and
22 videos and they haven’t even completed the forensic exam
23 yet.
24 He’s made statements about wrestling with juvenile boys
25 at a nudist camp.
1 His occupation is leveraged towards creating the
2 opportunity for him to come in contact with minors: He’s a
3 balloon entertainer.
4 He’s leveraged his assets to place himself close to
5 children, the same children that he fantasizes about
6 violating.
7 His mind apparently is completely overrun with this
8 singular passion in his life, to have the most degrading sex
9 he can imagine with a minor child. And that’s evidenced
10 from the testimony you’ve heard today.
11 He has two boys at home, many others who he would
12 contact through his employment.
13 The letters also indicate a relationship with the
14 synagogue that would place him in contact with boys.
15 He suffers from depression which makes him less able to
16 control his urges, I suggest.
17 So under these set of facts, considering the fact
18 there’s a presumption in this case 1 would suggest that
19 detention is the only appropriate pretrial state in this
20 case. And we’d ask you to detain him pending trial.
21 THE COURT: The matter submitted then on the
22 evidence and argument of counsel, 1 find by clear and
23 convincing evidence that no condition or combination of
24 conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the
25 community.
1 There’s been no evidence with respect to mental
2 treatment to this point in time.
3 And the revelation by the indictment supports the risk
4 and the findings. So the temporary order of detention is
5 made final. Remanded to the marshal.