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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana Court of Appeals has found that the order requiring a man to participate in the Sex Offender Management and Monitoring program does not violate Indiana’s prohibition of ex post facto laws.
George Patrick, convicted of two counts of Class B felony rape and two counts of Class C felony criminal confinement in 1991, was released on parole in 2007. But it was later revoked, and that’s when he filed his petition for writ of state habeas corpus relief, asserting his parole was revoked due to his “involuntary termination [sic] SOMM participation as a result of his special sex offender stipulations as a condition of his parole.”
“The Parole Board is allowed to impose conditions that are ‘reasonably related to the parolee’s successful reintegration into the community,’ Ind. Code § 11-13-3-4-(b), and that subsection was in place when Patrick was convicted. Our Supreme Court has found that the SOMM program ‘is a valuable tool aimed at the legitimate purpose of rehabilitating sex offenders before they are fully released from State control,’” Judge Melissa May wrote in George Patrick v. Keith Butts, Superintendent, State of Indiana and Indiana Parole Board, 33A04-1311-MI-577.
“As the Parole Board’s authority to impose conditions on parole is not limited by the date on which the program was created, but rather is limited by the program’s ability to help reintegrate the parolee into society, the order that Patrick participate in SOMM does not violate the ex post facto clause.”
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