State Supreme Court Removes Name From Sex Offender Registry

12-11-2009 Nebraska:

A man convicted more than 10 years ago of using a 16-year-old girl as a prostitute will not have to register as a sex offender, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday.

A man convicted more than 10 years ago of using a 16-year-old girl as a prostitute will not have to register as a sex offender, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday.

John Ways Jr. was convicted of pandering in 1996 and served two years in prison. He has clashed with authorities since, having been sentenced in 2004 to six years in federal prison in an explosives and firearms case and engaging in a long-running feud with Lincoln officials over a now-defunct strip club he owned. A dancer there was convicted in 2003 of performing sex acts with a dog.

Last December, Lancaster County District Judge Robert Otte sentenced Ways to 56 days in jail for contempt of court related to his 1996 pandering conviction. Prosecutors brought that charge after Ways failed to register with the state as a sex offender, as a different judge had ordered in 2002. That order came after prosecutors discovered Ways did not register as a sex offender when he was released from prison in 1998.

Otte also ordered Ways to register as a sex offender until early 2014.

Ways appealed, arguing among other things that the original order had set June 24, 2008, as his last day on the sex offender registry.

In its ruling Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court said the lower court didn't have the authority to determine the duration of Ways' registration. State regulations typically govern which offenders must register as sex offenders and for how long.

Ways' attorney, James Beckmann of Lincoln, lauded the ruling, saying his position all along had been that the lower court did not have the authority to order Ways onto the state's sex offender registry.

"There is a whole list of offenses in state law for which people must register as a sex offender," Beckmann said. "Contempt of court is not among them."

The Nebraska Attorney General's office, which had argued for the state, did not immediately respond Friday to a message from The Associated Press seeking comment. ..Source.. Margery A. Beck