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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowNearly three months after hearing arguments on Thomas H. Andrews’ request that he should not have to register in Indiana for a conviction in Massachusetts in 1984, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ordered that he be removed from Indiana’s sex-offender registry.
Andrews pleaded guilty in Massachusetts to rape and abuse of a child and completed his sentence in 1989. He moved to Indiana in 1993 and has not been arrested for any sex offense while living here, but is classified as a sexually violent predator who must register for life according to Indiana’s Sex Offender Registration Act.
Andrews argued that because he committed his crimes in another state before registration requirements took hold there or in Indiana, this state’s registration requirement violates the ex post facto clause of the Indiana Constitution.
The Court of Appeals agreed Wednesday in a 17-page opinion, Thomas H. Andrews v. State of Indiana, 29A02-1112-MI-1166, authored by Paul Mathias.
“Andrews, who on the record before us is an apparently rehabilitated and productive citizen of our state, was convicted of a sex offense almost thirty years ago, and well before Indiana enacted INSORA,” Mathias wrote. “Accordingly, pursuant to our supreme court’s opinion in Wallace, we must conclude that Andrews’s petition for removal of his name from Indiana’s sex offender registry should have been granted.”
The judges ordered Andrews’ petition be granted to allow for removal of his name and any other identifying information from the sex offender registry.
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