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Fruitful felon agrees to vasectomy

RICHMOND, Va. - A Virginia man who has fathered children with several women agreed to get a vasectomy to reduce his prison term by up to five years in a child-endangerment case that has evoked the country's dark history of forced sterilization.

    by ASSOCIATED PRESS, Daily News
    Published 

RICHMOND, Va.

- A Virginia man who has fathered children with several women agreed to get a vasectomy to reduce his prison term by up to five years in a child-endangerment case that has evoked the country's dark history of forced sterilization.

None of the charges against Jessie Lee Herald, 27, involve a sexual offense. Shenandoah County assistant prosecutor Ilona White said her motive in making the extraordinarily unusual offer was keeping Herald from fathering more than the seven children he has by at least six women.

"He needs to be able to support the children he already has when he gets out," she said, adding that Herald and the state both benefit from the deal, first reported by the Northern Virginia Daily.

Though Herald willingly - if reluctantly, according to his attorney - signed on to the deal, the agreement immediately calls to mind surgical sterilizations carried out in Virginia and dozens of other states during the 20th century under the discredited pseudoscience called eugenics, said Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia law professor.

Herald's attorney, Charles Ramsey, and White, the prosecutor, disputed any suggestion that the plea deal for Herald, who is white, has similarities to eugenics.

"I would never agree with that line of thinking. That was nowhere in my thought process," White said.

"I understand the comparison, but . . . that's kind of exaggerating it," Ramsey said.

Herald was sentenced to one year and eight months for child endangerment, hit-and-run, and driving on a suspended license in a crash in which authorities said his 3-year-old son was bloodied but not seriously hurt.

The agreement requires him to undergo the operation within a year of being released from prison and prohibits him from having the vasectomy reversed while he is on probation.

Herald will have to pay for the vasectomy, which can cost from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000. Ramsey said the reason for giving his client a year to get the surgery was to give him time to come up with the money.