A Fayette County man who tried to abduct children on his golf cart nearly two decades ago pleaded guilty for a second time this week and was sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Andrew Magnuson was arrested in the fall of 2000 after authorities caught him parked outside Oak Grove Elementary School with a knife, rope and duct tape on his golf cart, authorities said.
A day earlier, Magnuson approached 8- and 9-year-old boys at a Peachtree City park and offered them a ride on his cart, prosecutors said. Police said during the ride, Magnuson discussed inappropriate sexual subjects and urged the boys to come to his home.
When he was arrested outside the school the following day, Magnuson told investigators he wanted to abduct a child, and that he was willing to use force if necessary.
In 2002, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted kidnapping, enticing a child for indecent purposes and possession of child pornography, prosecutors with the Griffin Judicial Circuit said in a Facebook post.
But Magnuson’s conviction was overturned in 2015 after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that his history of mental illness should have prevented him from pleading guilty.
During the 2002 plea hearing, the judge asked if any defendants had ever been patients at a mental health facility or under the care of a psychiatrist. Magnuson incorrectly answered that he had not, court records show, despite having been institutionalized for mental health issues in the past.
Because of the Supreme Court ruling, Magnuson’s case had to be re-tried. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to two counts of enticing a child and one count of attempted kidnapping, prosecutors said.
He was sentenced to 50 years, with 30 to serve in prison and the rest on probation.
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