Published: November 12, 2009 11:41 pm      

NORTH TONAWANDA: Date set for hearing in sex offender's parole case

Paroled sex offender James McKinney violated a half dozen terms of his controversial release last spring, according to Assistant state Attorney General Wendy Witing.

Ultimately, that office is using the alleged violation to again call for him to be jailed or otherwise confined, just six months after he was released following a seven-year prison sentence.

A hearing Thursday before State Supreme Court Judge Richard Kloch in Lockport resulted in a Nov. 19 court date to address the alleged parole violations — that McKinney failed to complete a required psychological treatment regimen, resulting in his arrest three weeks ago.

McKinney, whose move from Niagara Falls to a North Tonawanda motel has blown up into a political wrangle in recent months, will remain in the Niagara County Jail in the meantime.

Following the next conference, Whiting and McKinney’s attorney, David Jay, will again meet to address the state’s petition to have him confined.

On the issue of where he can legally reside, the North Tonawanda location was a stone’s throw from a newly opened school and a daycare center. That prompted a difficult search recently in which two Buffalo locations apparently wouldn’t agree to house him.

Elected officials in Niagara Falls were in an uproar because McKinney, whose crimes were committed in North Tonawanda, was being house in the Cataract City. That led to his transfer to the B-Cozy Motel on Niagara Falls Boulevard, on the NT-Wheatfield border. Officials in those two municipalities then cried foul over his proximity to the school and daycare center.

But Kloch said he had in fact ordered McKinney to move out of North Tonawanda to another address prior to his most recent arrest. Kloch declined to say where, adding he didn’t want the issue to once again become a “political football.”

Joined in the courtroom by many of his closest family members, McKinney bore a cut on his nose and had to have an affidavit read aloud to him because his glasses had been broken after he was attacked recently by another inmate.

“Unfortunately, your honor, we are unable to discern anything in print,” Jay said. “He doesn’t have his glasses.”

McKinney chatted briefly with his loved ones before being lead out of the court room.

“You stay out of trouble,” he said to one of them.

A court officer declined his request to embrace them.

Jay is furious with the state’s request to send his client back into civil confinement.

The state’s petition clearly spells out allegations McKinney didn’t provide a necessary urine sample, didn’t complete mandatory assignments related to his rehabilitation program and missed a session altogether on Oct. 15.

But following the hearing Jay quoted from a parole officer’s report to make the case that his client’s “Strict and Intensive” post-release regimen is designed to fail.

“Most of what the state is complaining about is hyper-technical,” he said. “It’s like the days of Joe McCarthy. He found communists under every bed. Well, they find violations everywhere ...”

For example, he said in once case McKinney was cited for smoking a cigarette five minutes past his curfew and possessing pictures of his own nephews as children, a picture in a calendar he had throughout his jail sentence.

“He was out on the porch with some guys and he had been drinking,” Jay also acknowledged, “Which he shouldn’t have been.”

Jay contends that the terms of his client’s parole — some 80 rules he must abide by at all times — are meant not to govern McKinney’s post-release life, but to land him back behind bars, this time indefinitely.

The housing of serial sex offenders — who statistics show have a high likelihood of re-offense — after their release from prison is emerging as a serious challenge statewide. Frequently, the offenders don’t have the means to support themselves and their residency at motels or halfway houses often anger nearby residents. Many halfway houses have indeed drawn the line at taking in sex offenders.

McKinney, now 52, was convicted of multiple counts of sex abuse including rape and sodomy involving four girls younger than 14. He committed his crimes in the early part of this decade. All but one of the crimes was committed in North Tonawanda. Another took place in Niagara Falls.

The case is perhaps summed up best by this back-and-forth between the lawyers:

“(McKinney) demonstrates a clear inability to comply with supervision and lead a law abiding life,” the state’s petition asserts

“They wanted him put away (for life) from the start,” Jay has said.

Contact reporter Neale Gulleyat 693-1000, ext. 114.