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Putnam District Attorney Issues Warning to Convicted Sex Offenders Living in Putnam County
Putnam District Attorney Kevin L. Wright issued a warning today to convicted sex offenders moving to or living in Putnam County who are required to register under Megan's law. The District Attorney's warning is to "register and verify or face state prison". Under a new law, which Wright said will become effective August 17, 2007, sex offenders now clearly face a felony charge for a first offense of failure to register or verify their whereabouts with authorities, rather than a misdemeanor charge under the old law. The language of the old law appeared to require a prior misdemeanor conviction of the same reporting offense before a felony charge could be brought.
Wright said that not only is this initiative aimed at new sex offenders moving into a locality but also aimed at known sex offenders presently registered in a locale who have continuing verification obligations to report and update their status to authorities, such as the 34 known offenders living in Putnam according to the state's Sex Offender Registry. Wright said such state prison penalties, which he has supported for almost a decade, are long overdue, citing his prosecution of Leslie Howard Velders, a 63- year-old convicted pedophile in the spring of 1998. Wright brought a test case in which he personally prosecuted a case against Velders charging him as a felon for not reporting to authorities, even though Velders had no previous misdemeanor conviction for failing to report. Wright said that Velders' flagrant disregard of reporting his sex offender status warranted felony treatment even without Velder's prior misdemeanor conviction for the same offense. The District Attorney said Velders died in the Putnam County jail of natural causes awaiting trial so the felony prosecution theory was never tested in the courts.
District Attorney Wright said convicted sex offenders need state prison time as a consequence of not keeping authorities informed of their whereabouts. Police cannot protect and inform their communities without this information. Wright said Putnam authorities were completely unaware that Velders had ever moved from Westchester into Putnam's town of Patterson in 1997 and then moved again to another Putnam town, known as Putnam Valley, where he was charged with sodomizing a five year old boy and under investigation for repeatedly sodomizing at least two other children in the same household where Velders was staying as a boarder.
Wright said a year in the local jail as the penalty under the old misdemeanor law for not reporting their whereabouts acted as little more than a slap on the wrist to sex offenders who already stood convicted of a sex crime against society. The District Attorney said a felony and state prison sends a much better message. If sex offenders are concealing their whereabouts from law enforcement we will find them, prosecute them and demand judges put them away for up to four years in our state penitentiaries according to Wright.
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