A member of the Morse family who was arrested in July for driving with a suspended license and expired registration, avoided a possible year in prison after getting his criminal charges reduced to civil charges through a plea agreement.
Hudson Morse Parr, 29, and his attorney, Jaimie Carlin Washo Spivey, filed a plea in absentia in Sumter County Court on August 31, just over seven weeks after Parr was arrested for driving with a suspended license and expired registration on July 11.
According to the plea agreement, Parr’s first charge for driving with a suspended license was reduced to driving with a suspended license without knowledge, which changed it from a criminal charge to a civil charge.
By pleading guilty to the reduced charge, Parr was only responsible for a $236 fine and $25 hearing fee. He had faced a year of imprisonment when the charge was criminal.
The second charge for driving with an expired tag for over six months was reduced to driving with an expired tag for less than three months. As a result of the reduced charge, Parr was fined an additional $30 and ordered to pay $100 in prosecution costs to the court.
In Florida, motorists who are caught with expired registrations under six months face noncriminal infractions. If the registration is expired for six months or longer, motorists can still expect noncriminal charges, so long as it’s the first occurrence.
At the time of his arrest, the registration on Parr’s Tesla Model S had been expired for nearly a year, dating back to August 2022, and his license had been suspended for more than a month.
During the original traffic stop, a deputy with the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office noted that Parr had two prior convictions for driving while license suspended in 2021: One in Duval County and the another in St. Johns County.
Parr also has two convictions for driving with an expired registration, both in 2021.
The plea in absentia allowed Parr to forego appearing in court. According to the original arrest report, Parr’s home address is listed as a $3.25 million home located on Hillsborough Bay.
Parr, who is the son of Villages Vice President Jennifer Parr and grandson of the late Gary Morse, is a graduate of the Villages Charter School and the University of South Carolina. After college, he went on to to study finance at Jacksonville University and has been working for Morgan Stanley.
