Mauldin Man Loses Federal Court Appeal to Reduce Sentence

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a Mauldin man's fight to reduce a 10-year prison sentence imposed on him after he was found guilty of falsifying a passport in order to flee the country with his daughter.

Samuel Lee Horton II, 40, forged his ex-wife's signature to get a passport for his 3-year-old daughter, whom Horton escaped to Thailand with in 2009 after he said he planned to take her to Disney World in Florida for nine days. 

It took authorities 14 months to track down the pair. After pleading guilty, a federal judge granted prosecutors' motion to depart from advisory sentencing guidelines, the Greenville News reported. 

Said the newspaper: "Cited circumstances included that when Horton fled, the child’s family was left wondering for several weeks whether she was alive, judges wrote. Horton relocated to “the other side of the world” and had no intention of reuniting the girl with her family, judges wrote. Horton also taunted his ex-wife by email and locked the girl in her bedroom so she would not escape, according to the judges’ opinion."

Horton argued that his maximum sentence should have been no more than three years. 

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