Sex Offender Loses Case

In State Appellate Court

 By Andrew Gorosko

The state Appellate Court has rejected a Newtown sex offender’s appeal, which claimed that it would be unfair to have him submit to sex offender evaluation and treatment as a condition of his probation, which followed his imprisonment related to a sex offense conviction.

 In its February 12 decision, the state Appellate Court affirmed a Danbury Superior Court judge’s decision that had approved a prosecution motion to require such sex offender evaluation and treatment for Richard Crouch, 48, as a special condition of his probation.

Mr Crouch has an extensive criminal record stemming from incidents of public indecency in area towns, including Newtown. Locally, he was arrested and later sentenced in connection with a past incident of lewd behavior involving a child in the parking lot at the United Methodist Church parking lot in Sandy Hook Center, and another past incident involving three children at the Orchard Hill Nature Center off Huntingtown Road.

In his Appellate Court case, Mr Crouch had claimed that the Danbury Superior Court judge had improperly allowed a condition of probation involving sex offender evaluation and treatment to be added to the terms of a plea agreement that he had entered. Mr Crouch claimed the action violated his constitutional right to due process.

That 2002 plea agreement required that Mr Crouch serve four years in prison on a sex-related conviction, after which he would serve five years of probation.

Ironically, the Appellate Court decision does not now apply to Mr Crouch, whose probation has been terminated, said Assistant State’s Attorney David Shannon of Danbury Superior Court.

Mr Crouch is now in the New Haven Correctional Center, serving a three-year sentence on a conviction for risk of injury to a minor stemming from another criminal case.

Although the Appellate Court ruling does not now apply to Mr Crouch, the ruling sets a legal precedent for similar criminal cases, Mr Shannon said.

“I think it was a reasoned decision,” Mr Shannon said of the Appellate Court ruling.

In Mr Crouch’s appeal to the Appellate Court, the state had maintained that Mr Crouch had failed to show that sex offender evaluation and treatment was expressly excluded from being applied as a term of his probation.

In its decision the Appellate Court found that, “The record does not support the defendant’s argument that sex offender evaluation and treatment specifically were excluded in the plea agreement. What is evident is that the defendant bargained for a sentence that included a term of probation. If he accepts the offer of probation, [the defendant] must accept all of the conditions…In accepting probation, the defendant accepted at the time of sentencing the possibility that the terms of his probation could be modified or enlarged in the future in accordance with the statutes governing probation.”

Modifying the terms of probation is not a violation of constitutional rights, as long as the modified conditions reasonably relate to the defendant’s rehabilitation and preserve the safety of the general public, according to the decision.