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Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Convicted ethnic intimidator sent to prison for four years
DAYTON — A white Jefferson Twp. man who told his black neighbors he would burn their house down if they didn’t move out of the neighborhood was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday, March 25.
Earl L. McLearran pleaded guilty March 17, to charges of intimidation of a police officer and ethnic intimidation. Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Katherine Huffman told McLearran then that she intended to sentence him to four years.
Huffman also said the parole board could tack on additional prison time because McLearran’s new conviction violates terms of his parole in an earlier case.
Montgomery County sheriff’s deputies arrested McLearran, 39, of 304 Albers Ave., on July 31 after he was accused of yelling a racial slur at neighbor Saundra Ballard’s son and threatening to burn her house because he didn’t want blacks living in the neighborhood. McLearran was jailed.
While Ballard and her sons were testifying against McLearran before a grand jury, her house was set afire. A teenager later was charged as a juvenile with arson in the fire.
McLearran was convicted in 2005 for setting fires to several houses under construction because he didn’t want new houses in his neighborhood that would be occupied by blacks.
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Teen pleads guilty to gunning down Damarion Flippin
DAYTON — The accused killer of Damarion Flippin pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault charges Tuesday, March 24.
Scott Cook, Jr., 18, who was described by a juvenile judge earlier this month as a “high-ranking gang member,” will be sentenced April 7 by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Frances E. McGee.
Both charges include firearms specifications, which would add three years to any prison sentence.
Flippin, 17, who lived at 108 Pointview Ave., was shot about 6:30 a.m. Nov 13 after a brief argument at the RTA bus stop on Santa Clara and Wheatley avenues.
Flippin was pronounced dead six hours later at Miami Valley Hospital. He was on his way to the Isus Institute of Construction Technology, a charter school. Both Flippin and Cook, who was 17 at the time, were students at the school.
Police arrested Cook the same day, and he was held in juvenile detention until March 3, when Juvenile Court Judge Anthony Capizzi ordered him transferred to the Montgomery County Jail and set a $1 million bond.
Capizzi, who said that investigative reports called Cook a “high-ranking member” of the GVC gang, said Cook was not amenable to treatment in the juvenile system and said Cook should be tried as an adult.
Capizzi said that he did not know if Flippin’s death was the result of gang activity, but said Flippin had done nothing to provoke Cook, who apparently went to the school after the shooting for an expulsion hearing.
Isus principal Barbara Wagner testified March 3 that during that expulsion hearing, a staff member handed her a note that stated police were there for Cook.
Cook had 10 unexcused absences and 19 tardies between, Sept. 26, his first day at the school, and his suspension in early November. He was suspended with a recommendation for expulsion because he entered the basement, which is off limits to students, then left the school property without permission, Wagner testified.
During the March 3 hearing, prosecutors also called Johnny Vance, Cook’s probation officer, who said that Cook had more than 40 referrals to the juvenile system during the previous five years, but never before for a felony offense. Many of those referrals were unruly or truancy offenses, and had been generated by phone calls from Cook’s mother, Vance said.
Cook was “non-compliant” in counseling programs and had his probation extended four to five times during a three-year period, Vance said.
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Sex offender gets seven years for failure to register
DAYTON — A sex offender who failed to register after moving from Indiana to Dayton was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison.
U.S. District Senior Judge Walter H. Rice sentenced Alfred W. Cash late Tuesday, March 24. Cash pleaded guilty Dec. 11 to one count of failure to register as a sex offender.
Cash, 50, who moved from Indiana to Dayton in 2007, is currently serving a six-year sentence in state prison for Nov. 2008 convictions of gross sexual imposition of a child younger than age 13. He will serve his federal term after finishing his state term.
Cash’s sentence was enhanced because he committed the state crime of gross sexual imposition while he was unregistered in Ohio, according to Gregory G. Lockhart, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
Once he is released from prison, Cash will be required to stay under U.S. District Court supervision for the rest of his life, and to register as a sex offender.
In 1990, Cash was convicted in Oklahoma of child rape. He moved to Indiana in 1998, where he maintained his required sex offender registration from 2004 until July 2007, Lockhart said.
Cash never notified Ohio authorities when he moved to Dayton in September, 2007. Under the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Cash is required to register as a sex offender as a result of his 1990 rape conviction in another state.
Dayton police arrested Cash on Sept. 2 on an arrest warrant out of Indiana, due to his failure to update his sex offender registration there. He has been in police custody since his arrest.
A Montgomery County grand jury indicted Cash three weeks later on four counts of gross sexual imposition of a child younger than 13 and two counts of public indecency. He pleaded guilty to two of the GSI counts on Nov. 26 and Common Pleas Judge Gregory F. Singer sentenced him on Jan. 8.
SORNA is part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act passed by Congress in 2006. The law requires anyone convicted of sex crimes under federal law, or anyone convicted in state court and traveling in interstate commerce, to register with law enforcement agencies where they live, work or are a student.
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