He is saying that the AG office is going through these registered sex offenders manually to determine if their registry entries are correct. Mr. Hykes believes this manual process will take 4 – 6 weeks to complete. ( This is an unacceptable time frame !)
They are waiting for the OH Supreme Court to rule on the clarification motion before reclassifying everyone at once. (This is a stalling tactic by the AG. By filing this motion for clarification, they have a flimsy excuse for not reclassifying everyone in a timely manner). He has "no idea" when the Supreme Court will rule on the Clarification Motion.
Mr. Hykes is advising offenders to comply with their registrations even if they should now be expired. He said the Sheriffs’ may arrest out of compliance offenders, leaving offenders to prove they have judicial orders before they could be released. The offender would be found not guilty of failure to register but not until after being arrested. (Then they can file a lawsuit for this false arrest.)
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Email or Fax Your Judicial Order to the Ohio Attorney General:
In light of these discoveries, we suggest all readers who are now improperly classified sex offenders fax or email their "judicial order" papers to the Attorney General's office. When you were convicted and sentenced, you should have had a separate judicial hearing where a judge determined your classification ( Sexually Oriented Offender, Habitual Offender, or Predator). If you can find this paper, you should fax or email it to the AG Office with "Attention: Justin Hykes" on the subject line.
Justin Hykes, Assistant Attorney General of Ohio
justin.hykes@ohioattorneygeneral.gov
614-387-4257
FAX 614-466-5087 (main AG fax)
(This is the best Fax number we can find at this time. We do not know yet to what division this fax number goes to. Readers can try to call various numbers within the AG Department and ask for a fax number. If anyone can obtain or confirm a Fax number, please let us know here)
They are, of course, refusing to give out an appropriate Fax number. I did also get an e-Fax number which will go to Paula Armantrout at 866-721-2283 ( Managing Supervisor for Help Center), who "promised" to forward faxes to Justin Hykes. We shall see if that actually happens.
It is very disturbing that Mr. Hykes is stating that invalidated ex offenders are "required to register", even though they are illegally classified by the Ohio Attorney General Office, which is failing to take action to remove these offenders from their registry list.
We have also been told by another AG Official that Sheriffs cannot arrest an ex offender who is now not legally required to register due to the June 3rd Supreme Court ruling. Despite the fact that this demonstrates how incompetent the Office of the AG is in giving out contradictory information, it opens a wide gate for lawsuits should any ex offender be arrested for not registering when they are no longer legally required to do so.
Widespread and massive lawsuits against the State should follow if anyone is arrested after the Supreme Court has ruled that they have been unconstitutionally classified and are no longer required to register.
To Public Defenders:
We know that some County and State Public Defenders read our blogs. If you have any information for us about this threat to arrest those who do not register when they are no longer required to register, please send us an email here. Please also let us know what type of legal recourse or protection is appropriate should any of these invalidated registrants be arrested falsely. We would like to post this information for our readers. Thank you.
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