CSU QB isn't on SOR because he was convicted as a minor

This article discusses whether registered persons deserve the right for second chances. Derek Logue of OnceFallen.com was also cited in this story.

https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/crime--law/csu-isn-sex-offender-registry-because-conviction-came-minor/th6R85KQTdeT46e8WobRoK/

CSU QB isn’t on sex offender registry because conviction came as minor
By Josh Sweigart and Max Filby - Staff Writer

Posted: 5:00 a.m. Saturday, March 24, 2018

Central State University football player Trent Mays was convicted in 2013 along with a Steubenville High School teammate of raping a 16-year-old girl who was incapacitated by alcohol. But because Mays was a juvenile at the time, his conviction does not appear on the sex offender registry.
If not for widespread publicity of the crime, Mays’ conviction would be unknown to many of his fellow students, and possibly to the school.

Central State officials would not comment on their decision to allow Mays to enroll and play football, citing federal laws protecting student privacy.

Mays is one of 15 registered sex offenders in Greene County and 43 in Montgomery County who are not on the public registry because they committed their crimes as juveniles. Many of them are now adults.

State law requires juvenile offenders to report to the sheriff’s office where they live, but not where they go to school.

TOM ARCHDEACON: Trent Mays learning to make right decisions at CSU 

Greene County officials say Mays is the only juvenile offender who has reported a current college address in Greene County and none have registered a college or university in Montgomery County.

Ma’lik Richmond, who was convicted along with Trent Mays for the Steubenville rape, faced intense public pressure when Youngstown State let him on their team last year. The school said the team wouldn’t let him play after an online petition called for his removal from the team. Richmond ended up playing following a settlement with the school after he filed a lawsuit.

A pitcher at Oregon State quit the college’s baseball team after a newspaper revealed he was charged with molesting a six-year-old girl when he was 15.

RELATED: Sex offender says Ohio’s registry ‘destroys lives,’ should be abolished

“He went from being a major league draft possibility to being not drafted at all and probably won’t ever play baseball his entire life,” said Derek Logue, a registered sex offender in Cincinnati who now runs a website advocating for abolishing the registry. “His life is ruined.”

In response to this incident, Oregon State this year enacted a new policy requiring all prospective students to self-report if they have prior convictions or sex offenses. Similar policies exist at some, but not all, Ohio schools.

RELATED: Student twice charged and acquitted of rape wants to put past behind

Logue doesn’t believe any new laws or restrictions are needed in Ohio schools.

“You have these laws that dictate every aspect of how we live our lives…and the laws just seem to pile up year after year,” he said. “In time it begins to restrict our ability to become a productive member of society.”

Registered Citizen says Ohio’s registry ‘destroys lives,’ should be abolished

It is not often I get a news article just on my own personal struggles with the law. Of course, they added Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser as the "Big But" to the story, but I'm just going to leave a couple of articles about him HERE and HERE and leave it at that.

https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/sex-offender-says-ohio-registry-destroys-lives-should-abolished/ANVp5LPEWrptbGOIgR5XDJ/

Sex offender says Ohio’s registry ‘destroys lives,’ should be abolished
By Josh Sweigart and Max Filby - Staff Writer

Posted: 4:00 a.m. Friday, March 23, 2018

CINCINNATI —
Derek Logue is a member of one of the few groups it is socially acceptable for people to openly hate. He knows online comments on this story will likely refer to him in the most vulgar terms, and no one will come to his defense.

But Logue said people like him are being unfairly discriminated against, and he thinks something should be done about it.

Logue is one of 17,236 adult registered sex offenders in Ohio, a group whose criminal histories are accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

Offenders must list with the local sheriff’s office the addresses of where they live, work, volunteer and go to school — information, along with their photograph, that is put into an online database. Depending on the severity of their crimes, they have to register between once a year for 15 years or — in the most serious cases — every 90 days for life.

Many also face restrictions on living too close to a school or daycare.

‘I served my time’

While some people have called for more public notification and oversight of offenders, Logue believes the entire registry should be taken down.

“The registry destroys lives,” said Logue, who will spend the rest of his life on the registry. “It has destroyed my life.”

Logue was convicted in Alabama in 2001 of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl when he was 22, and spent three years in prison. When he was released, he moved to Cincinnati and was required by the state of Ohio to register as a “predator.”

Logue unsuccessfully challenged that designation in court, saying it is a higher label than Alabama considered his offense.

“I committed a crime. I served my time,” he said. “It’s one of those things you certainly regret and wish you could take back.”

Logue said the registry attaches an unfair label on individuals.

“If you’re a registered person people assume you’re a pedophile, that you’re a predator, that you’re just going to rape and molest at the first opportunity,” he said. “And that’s simply untrue.”

‘Absolutely essential’

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser doesn’t have much sympathy for Logue’s argument, saying public distrust “is the price people pay when they commit crimes.”

“We need to track these people,” he said. “I think the sex offender registry is absolutely essential and something that perhaps a sex offender should’ve thought about before he engaged in something he presumably knew was illegal and against all social norms.”

But Logue said the harm done by the registry goes beyond public embarrassment. Because his home address is listed on a publicly searchable database, he said he faces danger every time he walks out his front door or rides his bike to the grocery store.

“It’s a very real possibility,” he said of someone taking it upon themselves to do him harm.

Forced to move

Logue is sitting in an armchair of his ramshackle apartment in northern Cincinnati a few yards from a railroad line that routinely shakes the building as trains go by.

He considers himself lucky to have a place to live. He has been homeless. He was previously forced to move because his apartment at the time was too close to a vocational school. He said it once took him 130 phone calls over seven months to find a landlord willing to rent to him.

“I would call and ask if they’d take me. I would get not just a ‘No’,” but ‘Aw, hell no!’”

He said he is on disability because of depression and anxiety.

“The day I got my disability was one of the happiest days of my life,” said Logue, who has a bachelor’s degree but said he could only get low-wage jobs that would never last more than a few months because customers or co-workers would see him on the registry.

“You’re only going to be (able to hold a job) until someone finds out you’re on the list and makes an issue out of it,” he said.

‘Balancing act’

Logue now runs a website advocating for reform to Ohio sex offender laws. There’s no registry for murderers, or drug dealers and gang members, he argues, so there shouldn’t be one for sex offenders who he says are statistically unlikely to re-offend.

“We’re focused so much on this public registry and we advertise it as a ‘tool’ to help people look for potential threats in society, but people do not use the registry for that purpose,” he said.

“First of all most people don’t look at the registry, and second of all, even when they do look at the registry, they don’t look at it because they’re necessarily concerned for their public safety, they look at it because of salacious reasons.”

But Gmoser said public safety is outweighed by any inconvenience people on the registry may face.

“It’s a balancing act and I fall in favor of society that has not engaged in crime and just wants to live a peaceful, safe life in a peaceful, safe neighborhood,” he said.

Ohio Supreme Court to review Bellevue obscenity case

From the Fremont News-Messenger

https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/local/2018/03/11/ohio-supreme-court-review-bellevue-obscenity-case/411477002/

Ohio Supreme Court to review Bellevue obscenity case

Daniel Carson, Reporter Published 10:45 a.m. ET March 11, 2018

TOLEDO - A legal issue raised by a Bellevue man convicted of pandering obscenity will be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court

In a decision issued Friday, the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals in Toledo also vacated the four-year prison sentence of Glen Gilbert, 76, of Bellevue, remanded his case to Sandusky County Common Pleas Court, and ordered the state to pay the costs of Gilbert's appeal.

The appeals court ruled that the common pleas court did not inform Gilbert of the residential restrictions for sexual offenders, as required in Ohio Revised Code 2950.034, rendering his guilty plea involuntary.

The appeals court noted that its decision conflicted with a decision on sexual offender residential restrictions and notifications made by the 8th District Court of Appeals in State v. Creed.

The court certified Gilbert's case for review and final determination by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Sandusky County Prosecutor Tim Braun said Friday that all appellate court districts have the different ability to create law.

When there are conflicting appellate decisions, it is up to the state supreme court to review and decide the matter, Braun said.

In Gilbert's case, the 6th District Court of Appeals ruled that defendants needed to be notified of sexual offender residential restrictions, he noted.

"These are all things they (defendants) want to be advised of during their plea," Braun said.

Gilbert originally faced four felony charges after police responded to an internet post seeking a sexual encounter with a teen girl.

Gilbert posted on the website Craigslist and believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl when Bellevue Police Detective Eric Burt responded to the man's request for a sexual encounter with a teen, according to police.

Gilbert pleaded guilty in September 2016 to one felony count of pandering obscenity involving a minor.

In a separate ruling on Friday, the Ohio 6th District appeals court denied an appeal  involving Gage Villarreal, 20, of Gibsonburg.

The Sandusky County Common Pleas Court sentenced Villarreal to 18 months in prison in May on a telecommunications fraud charge after the man admitted he had been involved in an online banking scheme to take money from a credit union.

Villarreal appealed the trial court's decision.

The appeals court ruled that Villarreal's due process rights were not violated by the trial court and that the Sandusky County court did not err in imposing cost of confinement and court-appointed counsel on Villarreal.

A proposed bill would restrict public access to visual sex crime evidence. Not everyone agrees with it

This bill will make false allegations and false convictions harder to detect.

https://www.journal-news.com/news/proposed-bill-would-restrict-public-access-visual-sex-crime-evidence-not-everyone-agrees-with/Wlwcyfsiesl4IWPTgArIJP/

A proposed bill would restrict public access to visual sex crime evidence. Not everyone agrees with it.
Michael Pitman  Staff Writer
 12:00 a.m. Thursday, March 1, 2018

Ohio Rep. Wes Retherford’s bill designed to protect a crime victim’s rights could soon be headed for an Ohio House vote.

The bill, called the Victim’s Protection and Privacy Act, would prevent photos, videos and images of a victim of a sexually oriented crime from being accessed via a public records request. The bill was prompted by Retherford’s conversation with a Hamilton police detective.

These pieces of evidence were protected throughout a court case, including the appeals process, until the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Caster vs. Columbus. In a split decision, the court said these pieces of investigative evidence could be released once the initial court case concludes.

House Bill 451 would prevent that. The House’s Government Accountability and Oversight Committee voted 11-0 on Tuesday to move the bill out of committee on for a full vote by the House. Retherford, R-Hamilton, believes it could be up for a floor vote next week.

“With the vote (on Tuesday), we are one step closer to ensuring victims of sexual violence are not subject to being re-victimized,” he said.

The bill is supported by the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, and the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence.

“Our members do occasionally receive public records requests for the types of records described in your bill,” wrote Steve Hall, assistant executive director for the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, to Retherford earlier this month.

“Many prosecutors have expressed to us that they make every effort to deny such requests. Others feel that there is currently no authority to do so. All agree that it would be very beneficial to have a clearly stated exclusion.”

While the Ohio Public Records Law provides transparency “critical to a functioning free society,” Camille Crary, director of legal services and policy with the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, said, “this loophole infringes on the rights and privacy interest of any person who happens to end up the victim of a sex crime.”

However, the bill is not supported by all. Dennis Hetzel, president and executive director with the Ohio News Media Association, said this bill “is not an easy one to oppose” because no one wants graphic content such as photos or videos released that could be used to re-victimize crime victims.

But there’s nothing in state law — even after the Caster decision — that says this would happen, and it has never occurred “to anyone’s knowledge,” Hetzel said in his testimony to the Government Accountability and Oversight Committee.

“Requesting records and receiving records are two different things. This is why there is no documented case of an offender receiving graphic photos after a case is closed,” Hetzel said.

“If such a request were made, it would be denied, and it would be upheld based on factors such as past Ohio Supreme Court decisions on the rights to privacy and the ‘catch-all’ exemption in our open records law that keeps material exempt if it is made secret by other portions of state and federal law.”

Retherford said the bill allows the legislature to be “proactive” to a possible situation “instead of being reactive to a scenario that could happen.”