A Florida jury found Steven Deron Payne Sr., the former senator at large from St. John, guilty Wednesday afternoon on felony sexual battery charge.
The jury deliberated for three hours, with some time set aside for a jurist’s question. Payne, 59, could receive 25 years in jail and $15,000 fine when sentenced Nov. 5.
The Orlando Police Department arrested Payne — a former chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Justice and Public Safety — in September 2023 on a Duval County warrant as he arrived on a flight from St. Thomas.
The warrant was for assaulting a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 sometime between Aug. 1, 2018, and Feb. 27, 2019, while Payne was “in a position of familial or custodial authority” of the child, according to publicly available documents on the Duval County Circuit Court docket. Previous reports revealed that he had become the girl’s guardian after a living situation with previous caregivers deteriorated.
The victim told officials of two other incidents involving Payne. One was in the U.S. Virgin Islands, when he called her into a bedroom where he was lying naked on a bed. The child said she left the room and closed the door, according to court documents.
In the fall of 2017 in Florida, where the girl had relocated after Hurricane Irma, Payne reportedly took her to a theme park in Osceola County, where they stayed in a hotel room together. Once in the room, he complained of leg cramps, undressed and asked for a massage, then forced the girl into the bathroom, made her take her clothes off, pulled her into the shower, bathed her and forced her to bathe him, according to the document.
Payne is a former Virgin Islands police officer, music teacher at Gomez Elementary, and School Resource Officer for the Virgin Islands Police Department.
The 2023 arrest followed Payne’s expulsion from the V.I. Legislature in July 2022 after his fellow senators voted to eject him for multiple violations of Legislature’s rules. He faced serious accusations of sexual misconduct by three different women — including a staff member. Payne denied the accusations. He filed a civil suit in V.I. Superior Court in response, which was subsequently transferred to the V.I. Supreme Court and ultimately dismissed with prejudice.
The prosecution also introduced evidence of two other incidents, including the legislative staff member’s allegations that Payne behaved inappropriately while on Senate business on St. Croix in 2022, and another by a woman who said Payne tried to force her to touch him and ripped off her underwear before she could escape a St. John beach in 2005. Payne was there to supposedly help her train for the police academy.
Payne trained as a police officer in Tampa Bay, Florida, gaining a Law Enforcement Certificate in 1998.
As a write-in candidate in 2016, Payne said he loved working with young, vulnerable people.
“As a police officer with the Virgin Islands Police Department, Steve Payne founded the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Program; where he could have more access to the youths regardless of their age or grade level,” he wrote. “His campaign for change and empowerment of the youths started at Gomez Elementary School, where he served as the Music Teacher. However, Payne realized that there was a special need for reaching and impacting the lives of the male students; therefore, he opened his band room to them outside of his normal classroom hours. This created a safe and positive outlet for them.”
Payne also credited himself with founding the Gomez Golden Stars, the Addelita Cancryn Marching Iguanas, the JDPP Marching Kings, the JDPP Jammerz, the Marching Cougars, and the Marching Gulls and the VI Avengerz.
