Nicki Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty was convicted back in 1995 of first-degree attempted rape. He was 16 years old at the time.
LOS ANGELES — The husband of rapper Nicki Minaj was arrested by U.S. Marshals after he failed to register as a sex offender, according to reports.
E! News confirmed through the United States Attorney’s Office of Los Angeles that Nicki Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, surrendered to authorities and was taken into custody in L.A. Wednesday.
New York state records show Petty was convicted back in 1995 of first-degree attempted rape. He was 16 years old at the time.
An indictment obtained by both E! News and reported by NBC 4 in New York says Petty moved to California in July 2019 but did not register as a sex offender. He was reportedly pulled over Nov. 15 in Los Angeles County and it was there that police determined he was a convicted sex offender in New York.
The indictment states:
“Beginning on or about July 14, 2019, and continuing through on or about November 15, 2019, in Los Angeles County, within the Central District of California, and elsewhere, defendant Kenneth Petty, an individual who was required to register pursuant to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”), as a result of being convicted of Attempted Rape in the First Degree, in violation of New York Penal Code Section 110-130.35, a felony, on or about April 5, 1995, in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, Queen County, case number 4521-94, and having, after said conviction, traveled in interstate commerce, knowingly failed to register as a sex offender as required by SORNA.”
According to New York State’s Sex Offender Registry, while Petty can move to other states or countries as a convicted sex offender, he must notify the Division of Criminal Justice Services no later than 10 days after the move.
Nicki Minaj, who has known Petty since childhood, is aware of his criminal past.
When it was revealed that Petty and Nicki Minaj were in a relationship, fans of the rapper on social media questioned why she would be romantically involved with someone convicted of attempted rape.
In December 2018, Nicki Minaj defended Petty saying “He was 15, she [the victim] was 16…in a relationship. But go awf, [sic.] Internet. Y’all can’t run my life. Y’all can’t even run y’all own life.”
The couple married in October 2019.
Nicki Minaj has not publicly acknowledged Petty’s latest arrest.
A bill proposed in the Georgia legislature would eliminate the statute of limitations established for prosecutions of rape and other sexual offenses.
House Bill 1069 was filed this week by State Representatives Scott Holcomb, Debbie Buckner, Rick Williams, Josh McLaurin, Miriam Paris, and Jasmine Clark and would address existing code sections that prohibit the prosecution of rape, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated sexual battery after a certain number of years. All three crimes are felonies.
Statutes of limitation were put in place in part to discourage convictions based on “unreliable witness testimony,” including memories of events that occurred years in the past.
Under current Georgia law, the statute of limitations for rape, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated sexual battery prosecutions is capped from the time the crime occurred, unless DNA evidence is available to establish the the identity of the accused. In the cases of established identity, there is no statute of limitations and cases can commence at any time. Without the DNA evidence, however, rape cases are capped at fifteen years while aggravated sexual battery and aggravated sodomy cases are capped at four years, unless the victim was under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, in which cases the statute of limitations is seven years.
HB 1069 strikes the current statutes from the code altogether and ensures the three offenses can prosecuted at any time, regardless of the presence of DNA evidence.
The measure would only apply to those crimes which occur on or after July 1, 2020, when the act would take effect if approved by the legislature.
It is difficult to compare Georgia’s statute of limitations across states because states don’t always classify crimes in the same manner and some states may impose different statutes for degrees of offenses (i.e. – first degree, second degree, etc). A number of comparative tools and resources are available on the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, website.
According to RAINN, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming are the only states in the nation to have removed the statute of limitations for all felony sex crime offenses.
HB 1069 has been assigned to the House Judiciary Non-civil Committee. You can read it below.
Following six days of testimony in the sexual abuse lawsuit of a Georgia karate coach, jurors must now decide if seven adult plaintiffs should be compensated.
WOODBINE, Ga. — The first case filed under Georgia’s Hidden Predator Act is now in the hands of a jury. The jury of eight women and four men must decide whether seven men who testified that they were sexually molested as children by their karate coach deserve compensatory and punitive damages.
After deliberating for three hours, the jury adjourned Wednesday. They told the judge they were stuck, and he suggested they resume deliberations Thursday morning.
Jurors spent the past six days listening to harrowing allegations of sexual predation by Kingsland, Ga., Pak’s Karate owner Craig Peeples, along with staunch denials by the coach that any abuse occurred.
A 2014 investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation determined there was “sufficient evidence” of sodomy and sexual abuse to charge him, but the statute of limitations had expired in 2007.
“The expiration of the statute of limitations is an absolute bar to prosecution,” Brunswick Judicial District Attorney Jackie Johnson wrote at the time. “As such, my office is unable to proceed to grand jury on these allegations.”
During closing arguments, Wednesday, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Robert Friedman, reminded jurors of their allegations of sexual abuse and said no one would willingly subject themselves to that humiliation. He called Peeples “a smart sexual predator and a master manipulator.”
“Most people who molest children go to jail for what he’s done,” Friedman said. “This is the means to punish Craig Peeples for what he’s done. This is how to deter him from harming one more boy.”
Peeples’ attorney, James Durham, countered that the plaintiffs made their allegations because they were seeking money and attention. He discounted their description of hundreds of encounters in Peeples’ bedroom, in hotel rooms during karate tournaments and at the Pak’s Karate studio.
“Ladies and gentlemen, where are the parents?” Durham said. “Where are the other instructors? How does that happen? Somebody has to know. Somebody had to see if it happened.”
Peoples himself called the plaintiffs — all of whom were elite former karate students of his — “psychotic.”
Coffee County Sheriff Doyle Wooten releases the following information: On March 12,2020 Coffee County Deputies located and arrested Anthony Goodwin, an absconded sex offender who had been on the lam for several weeks now. Goodwin was taking into custody without incident and transported to the Coffee County Jail. He is currently charged with Failure to Register Address Change and Violation of Probation. Sheriff Wooten thanks the public and the Deputies for their hard work in keeping track of these offenders and making sure they comply with Georgia Law and taking appropriate actions when they do not.
ATLANTA – Halloween signs and legal hurdles tripped up legislation aimed at requiring repeat sexual offenders to wear electronic ankle monitors for life in Georgia that a state House panel examined Wednesday.
Lawmakers are hustling to continue
monitoring sex offenders classified as “sexually dangerous predators” following
a Georgia Supreme Court ruling last year that upended the practice of automatic
lifetime ankle monitoring absent a judge’s sentence.
As a result, more than 400 sex offenders
deemed at risk for committing future crimes had been freed from their lifetime
monitoring punishments as of last October, totaling nearly half of the state’s roughly
1,000 sexually dangerous predators.
House Bill 720 would automatically impose
lifetime electronic tracking on sexual predators with multiple sex-offense
felony convictions. That should keep the state’s most dangerous sexual
predators from flying under the radar while Georgia’s rules on electronic
monitoring are in flux, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steven Sainz.
“This looks at trying to identify the
population that has committed an offense and are most likely to be needing that
additional monitoring,” said Sainz, R-Woodbine.
But the measure does not tackle the
overarching issue of giving judges in Georgia full discretion to include
lifetime ankle monitoring as a form of probation included in an offender’s
original sentence, regardless of whether the crime was a repeat offense, Sainz
said.
He noted that proposal on judicial
discretion may come in a separate bill not yet introduced in the 2020
legislative session.
Currently, Georgia law gives the state
Sexual Offender Registration Review Board sole authority to classify sex
offenders in a way that forces them to wear ankle monitors for life.
That was the arrangement until last
March, when the state’s high court said lifetime monitoring would be
unconstitutional if not part of a judge’s original sentence.
A Georgia Senate study committee recently
recommended changing state law to give judges authority to incorporate lifetime
ankle monitoring into a sentence, which would factor in information provided by
the review board.
Members of a House Judiciary Non-Civil
subcommittee did not vote on Sainz’s bill’s Wednesday amid concerns from some
lawmakers and criminal defense attorneys who objected to the measure’s broad
scope – as well as a last-minute change requiring repeat sex offenders to post warning
signs outside their houses for Halloween.
Rep. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, said
he opposed an amendment to the bill brought Wednesday concerning the Halloween
sign, which would legally have to say: “No candy, treats, or treat-or-treating
at this residence.”
The sign, which McLaurin called a
violation of free-speech protections, would have to be displayed every year on
Oct. 30 and Oct. 31.
“It’s just downright humiliating to have
to post that at your house,” McLaurin said. “And I understand that sexual
offenses are extremely serious. My concern would be that the dignity of a
person – and particularly with regard to their First Amendment interests – is
seriously implicated by this type of statutorily mandated language.”
Sainz said after Wednesday’s hearing that
he plans to keep the Halloween sign requirement but might modify what it says.
The bill could also cast too wide a net
over who might be subject to a lifetime-tracking sentence, McLaurin said. He
noted state law already sets lifetime imprisonment as the maximum punishment
for several violent crimes like murder and rape. Adding separate lifetime
penalties for various sexual offenses could cause legal murkiness, he said.
“My concern is this bill won’t do the
thing it’s supposed to do,” McLaurin said.
Officials on the state review board have
said they’re well-positioned to decide who should merit lifetime monitoring
because the board has comprehensive access to key information like an
offender’s criminal records, psychological profile and behavior history while
incarcerated.
But critics argue the review board has
too much leeway to set the stiff punishment, often doing so long after a judge
hands down a sentence or an offender is released from prison. They have also
claimed the review board’s methods for classifying offenders as sexually
dangerous predators are not transparent.
Broadening the kinds of sexual offenses that
could prompt lifetime monitoring could complicate the issue more than
clarifying it, said Jill Travis, executive director of the Georgia Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“We would continue to recommend that the
need for this lifetime monitoring should be tied to individuals’ sexual
dangerous and not a specific crime,” Travis said.
The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Ed
Setzler, R-Acworth, said he wants to see some tweaks to the bill but expects it
to eventually head to the full committee.
Tili Buchanan is facing charges after her stepchildren saw her topless in her own home. Her lawyers say a topless ban for women is unconstitutional. (Source: KSL via CNN)
February 25, 2020 at 9:27 PM EST – Updated February 25 at 9:27 PM
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A lawyer says a Utah woman who fought criminal charges after her stepchildren saw her topless in her own home has taken a plea deal to avoid the risk of having to register as a sex offender if convicted.
Tilli Buchanan’s decision Tuesday brings an end to the case that drew attention to a debate over whether it’s unfair to treat men and women differently for baring their chests.
Buchanan and the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah had pointed to a court ruling that overturned a topless ban in Colorado and helped fuel a movement.
Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
One man received a decade in prison and another man pleaded guilty to having illegal mobile phones and controlled substances while in prison, in actions taken Friday in U.S. District Court in Brunswick.
Joshua Weaver, formerly of St. Marys, pleaded guilty Dec. 6 to attempted coercion and enticement of a minor for sexual activity while using a mobile phone and the internet. A federal grand jury also indicted him for attempted transfer of obscene matter to a minor, but that charge was dropped as a condition of his plea.
Weaver was one of nine men arrested in a child sex trafficking sting that involved the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, along with the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, the Kingsland Police Department and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor said at the time of the arrests, “The investigation conducted by federal, state and local agencies is an example of how a cooperative effort by law enforcement protects the youth from those who attempt to prey upon the children of our communities.”
The crime to which Weaver pleaded carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced Weaver to 10 years and six months in federal prison. Once released, he’s to be under five years of supervised release, during which time he must attend a sex offense treatment program, not view or possess any material with sexually explicit conduct and must not obtain internet access.
In the other matter, Jamohl Swann pleaded guilty for accepting eight contraband mobile phones and 53 strips of suboxone, which is considered a Schedule III controlled substance. Angela Satterwhite, who faces related charges, brought the items to him on Dec. 18, 2018, at the federal prison in Jesup.
In addition to time he’s already serving, Swann is looking at the possibility of a maximum sentence in this matter of five more years in prison and three years’ supervised release. Federal sentencing guidelines mandate his sentencing in this case must be consecutive to the term he’s presently serving.
Swann received a sentence in federal court in Maryland in 2010 to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon and money laundering.
By Diane Diamond . . . Those who fight for a more equitable way to keep track of sexual predators won a big victory in Michigan last week. That is a state with some 44,000 names on its sexual offenders registry.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Cleland put his foot down and gave the Michigan legislature 60 days to rewrite its current “unconstitutional” registry statute. Last spring, Cleland set a 90-day deadline for lawmakers to rework the law, but he was ignored. This time, he’s serious.
Everyone agrees we need to keep track of career sex criminals after they are released from prison. Once they’ve been convicted of violent sex crimes, it’s possible they’ll reoffend. A public safety monitoring system makes sense.
But understand that these state registries — there is one in every state — are bloated beyond belief with many names that shouldn’t be there. Registries were mandated by federal law in the mid-’90s to keep watch over ex-convict pedophiles who sexually targeted children. Somewhere along the line, we lost our way.
Included in the registry over the years have been: a 10-year-old female caught “play-acting sex” and then branded with “criminal sexual conduct” charges; a 19-year-old boy caught with his 15-year-old girlfriend; drunks discovered urinating or streaking in public; average citizens unjustly accused of sex crimes during ugly divorces; and men duped into believing that an intimate partner was not a minor when she was. Many of these people, often caught up in a moment of normal human passion, have been forced to register as sex criminals —for the rest of their lives.
Lonnel Randolph Harrison is listed as an absconder in the GBI sex offender registry.
TROUP COUNTY, Ga. — Authorities in west Georgia are on the lookout for a man who has failed to register as a sex offender and is still on the run.
Police said Lonnel Randolph Harrison is facing charges not only for failing to register but also for felony probation violation.
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Harrison has spent most of the last 13 years in prison having been incarcerated in 2007, 2018 and 2019 and released in 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively.
He faced charges of rape and robbery after an incident in 2001 in Fulton County and, more recently, first-degree burglary in 2017.
Harrison is described as a black male who is about 6 feet tall and 155 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He is listed as an absconder on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sex offender registry.
Anyone who knows Harrison’s location is asked to call 706-883-1616 or, to remain anonymous, Crime Stoppers at 706-812-1000.
VALDOSTA, Ga. — 14 people were arrested in South Georgia last week after a four-day operation targeting child predators.
According to the GBI, Operation Broken Arrow was based around the Valdosta area and took several months of planning to execute.
The GBI says the 14 people arrested range in age from 24-57 and they traveled from areas around South Georgia with the intent to meet a child for sex.
They were identified as:
Dave Vincent Almon, 43, retail manager
Billy Stephen Carter, 57, truck driver
Eric Bernard Copeland, press operator
Walter Lee Curry, 33, laborer
Jamian Hogan, 34, retail associate
John Henry Hursey, 45, carpenter
Eugene Andega Mainah, 35, unemployed
Keith Morrison, 43, truck driver
Wyman Rene Phillips, 36, electrician
Wilford Sermons, 28, customer service representative
Josue Trejo, 31, forklift driver
Bronson Jamari D. Tripp, 24, retail associate
Keith Walters, 44, university Dean
Justin Na’eem Warren, 24, student
The Valdosta State University web site lists Walters as the dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.
The GBI says at least one of the people they arrested had previously been arrested on a peeping tom charge, and at least two of the other arrestees had been investigated for sex crimes before.
19 mobile devices were seized as evidence in the operation.
According to the news release, investigators had more than 120 exchanges with people on social media or the Internet platforms. Over 40 cases were established that met the threshold for arrest, and 14 of those cases were concluded with arrests.
The 14 are formally charged with violating the Computer or Electronic Pornography and Child Exploitation Prevention Act of 2007 and/or Trafficking of Persons for Labor or Sexual Servitude.
Additional charges and arrests may be forthcoming.
