7-29-17 Missouri:A Cole County jury has found a man not guilty of charges in connection with the killing of an inmate at the Algoa Correctional Center in December 2015.
David Young, 43, had been charged with second-degree murder and violence against a Department of Corrections offender.
His defense had argued he was an accomplice and not the person who killed Harley Holt, 35, who had been serving a four-year sentence for two counts of failure to register as a sex offender in Greene and Howell counties at the time of his death.
Young was serving a sentence for drug possession at the time Holt was killed.
Court documents show Holt died after being struck and kicked in the head.
In June, another man was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a Cole County jury found him guilty in Holt’s killing.
Bailey Trent-Kettlekamp, 30, was found guilty of second-degree murder and violence toward an offender in the Department of Corrections in April after a trial that lasted most of a week.
The judge sentenced him to 25 years on the murder charge and 10 years on the violence charge, to be served concurrently.
Trent-Kettlekamp was serving time on a stealing charge when Holt was killed. ..Source..
1 comment:
If Holt was only doing time for failure to register - and we can safely presume the author of the article would have mentioned if he was at least accused of anything else connected to this conviction - than this is another shining example of how the sex offender registry is one of the most idiotic creations our government ever created and solely responsible for Holt's death. I hope Holt's family can find a lawyer willing to push a wrongful death civil suit against Missouri.
The sex offender registry does absolutely nothing to prevent the grossly overstated recidivism rate of sex offenders - around 5% according to the Department of Justice. Most of that are technical parole/probation violations, and most of the rest are for the registrant's inability to pay for court-ordered "treatment" or polygraphs, often because the registrant is homeless or unable to work. Even in the very, very few cases where a registrant is arrested for a new crime (as opposed to PO violation), his identity as a sex offender registrant is never known until he is booked, when his arrest record will be retrieved anyway.
Ironically, failure to register is the only crime the registry does arguably prevent. Sorry, but I don't think that failing or refusing t o register is an indication that the offender is a threat to anyone, especially when you also consider that local sheriffs, the states, and SORNA do such a poor job of even maintaining the accuracy of their registries, which again accomplish absolutely nothing to reduce recidivism or safeguard communities.
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