The Appellate Division, Third Department has unanimously affirmed the March 15, 2017 order of the Ulster County Court (Williams, J.) which classified Jerome Wilson, pursuant to the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA), as a risk Level Three sexually violent offender.
In 1997, while serving a sentence for a 1984 murder conviction in the Eastern Correctional Facility, defendant pled guilty to sexual abuse in the first degree in the Ulster County Court for subjecting a female correctional facility employee to sexual contact by forcible compulsion. Defendant was sentenced on that charge to a five year term of imprisonment to run consecutively with the sentence he was then serving.
Subsequent thereto, the Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders classified defendant pursuant to SORA as a risk Level Three sex offender. Following a hearing, County Court accepted the Board’s classification, denied defendant’s request for a downward departure and classified defendant as a risk Level Three sex offender and a sexually violent offender.
Appealing County Court’s risk Level Three determination, defendant argued that in the past six years, he had shown no signs of aggression, that his substance abuse and alcohol issues were in the distant past and that his failure to successfully complete a sex offender treatment program was only because he was confined after a disciplinary hearing. The Appellate Division, Third Department, however, rejected each of defendant’s arguments affirmed County Court’s determination.
On appeal, the defendant is represented by Assistant Public Defender Michael K. Gould, Esq. Assistant District Attorney Joan Gudesblatt Lamb, Esq. handled the appeal for the District Attorney’s Office.