U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is asking Florida’s attorney general to take over the case of a Seminole foster parent charged with child sex crimes and to pursue the death penalty — a punishment the charges he faces do not carry.
John David Ballard, 51, was arrested Wednesday by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office on 20 counts of possessing child sexual abuse material and five counts of possessing images of sexual activity involving animals, according to the sheriff’s office. He remained in the Pinellas County Jail on Thursday after a judge delayed a decision on bond. Ballard’s attorney, Michael Haworth, asked that the matter be heard later by the judge assigned to the case.
Ballard and his husband, Bradley Borsuk, fostered 23 boys between 2017 and 2023 and adopted five boys between 2015 and 2023, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. Investigators said the children ranged in age from 4 to 12. The couple co-wrote an adoption journal called “Our Journey.”
The investigation began May 12 with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a man was using the messaging app Kik to discuss sexually abusing his 7-year-old son, Gualtieri said. Detectives identified Ballard and searched his phone, finding dozens of videos of children from infancy to age 11 and five videos depicting sex acts involving animals, the sheriff’s office said.
“John Ballard used his position of trust as a foster parent and an adoptive parent to young boys as part of his personal sexual gratification,” Gualtieri said.
In a letter to Attorney General James Uthmeier, Luna, R-Fla., whose district includes part of Pinellas County, urged him to review the case personally and charge Ballard under the state statute that makes sexual battery of a child under 12 a capital offense. “You cannot rehabilitate a predator,” she wrote. Uthmeier responded: “We are on it.”
But the law Luna cited does not fit the case as charged. The statute applies to sexual battery — rape — of a child younger than 12. Ballard faces no such charge. Gualtieri said detectives have not established probable cause to bring additional charges.
The death penalty provision has never been tested. Florida lawmakers passed it in 2023 to challenge Kennedy v. Louisiana, the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars capital punishment for crimes that do not kill the victim. The law’s text calls that ruling wrongly decided, and Uthmeier has urged the Supreme Court to overturn it. Prosecutors across the state have moved to seek death in child sexual battery cases since the law took effect, but none has produced a death sentence, leaving no case to carry the question to the justices.
The state’s most prominent attempt ended this spring. State prosecutors working with Uthmeier’s office had sought the death penalty against Nathan Holmberg, a Hernando County man indicted on seven counts of capital sexual battery. Holmberg died in the Hillsborough County Jail in early April in what investigators called an apparent suicide. He also faced child sexual abuse material charges in Pinellas County.
Luna has pressed the issue in Congress. In a package of bills first introduced in 2024 and reintroduced in January 2025, she has sought to make a range of child sex crimes punishable by death or life in prison. One, the Holding Child Predators Accountable Act, would apply that penalty to producing, distributing or possessing child sexual abuse material — the conduct Ballard is accused of. Legal analysts say those measures face the same constitutional barrier as Florida’s law.
Luna also asked Uthmeier to investigate Borsuk, who has not been charged, and to determine whether he knew of the alleged abuse.
The four adopted boys who were living in the home are no longer there, according to statements at the June 18 bond hearing. The Florida Department of Children and Families is conducting its own review.
Some former foster children described what Gualtieri called concerning behavior that remains under investigation, including being punished by having to undress and stand at a street-facing window. The sheriff said Ballard also watched some of the boys bathe.
“This is really a very difficult case because it involves the betrayal of the trust that the child welfare system puts into people who volunteer to help the most vulnerable among us,” Gualtieri said.
The investigation is continuing.