ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: Associated Press
A court has ruled that a sheriff's deputy will have to continue paying child support for a 17-year-old girl whom blood tests show he did not father.
Circuit Judge John Morrison Jr. agreed Thursday that Norfolk Sheriff's Deputy Federico Ampey was not the girl's biological father but ruled that he would have to continue paying.
Ampey has been paying $153 in child support every two weeks for almost five years. He was appealing an August 1995 juvenile court decision that said he still had to pay, notwithstanding a blood test that proved that he didn't father the girl.
The judge said he was forced to make his decision according to legal precedents. Since another judge earlier had ruled that Ampey was the father, the decision stands under common or case-based laws saying you can't re-try facts or issues already properly decided in court, even if the results may be unjust.
While making his ruling, Morrison quoted Charles Dickens' ``Oliver Twist,'' saying the law is sometimes an ``ass.'' For a different result, the General Assembly first must change the law, the judge said.
Thursday's hearing was supposed to be just a pretrial conference before a planned Oct. 8 trial. But the judge decided to go ahead and rule without hearing from witnesses, since there were no disputes about the facts.
Ampey's lawyer said he will appeal.
``The bottom line is still `any dad'll do you,''' said Everett Meixel, who's donating his services to Ampey. ``Until we get it changed.''
Ampey and the girl's mother had a brief affair the year before the girl's birth. The girl is in Social Services' custody, and staying with an aunt. The girl's mother has been in a coma in a nursing home for seven years, suffering from complications from a subsequent childbirth.
Ampey said he wasn't represented by a lawyer when first approached about paternity, and said he was confused and intimidated in court. He denied paternity, but later signed papers admitting it, and then couldn't hire a lawyer to fight it.
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