LOCKPORT: State official says McKinney violated terms of release

Courts

November 13, 2009

Sex offender will answer to claim as state lobbies for civil confinement

By Neale Gulley The Niagara Gazette Fri Nov 13, 2009, 12:18 AM EST

Paroled sex offender James McKinney violated a half dozen terms of his controversial release last spring, according to Assistant state Attorney General Wendy Witing.

Ultimately, that office is using the alleged violation to again call for him to be jailed or otherwise confined, just six months after he was released following a seven-year prison sentence.

A hearing Thursday before State Supreme Court Judge Richard Kloch in Lockport resulted in a Nov. 19 court date to address the alleged parole violations — that McKinney failed to complete a required psychological treatment regimen, resulting in his arrest three weeks ago.

McKinney, whose move from Niagara Falls to a North Tonawanda motel has blown up into a political wrangle in recent months, will remain in the Niagara County Jail in the meantime.

Following the next conference, Whiting and McKinney’s attorney, David Jay, will again meet to address the state’s petition to have him confined.

On the issue of where he can legally reside, the North Tonawanda location was a stone’s throw from a newly opened school and a daycare center. That prompted a difficult search recently in which two Buffalo locations apparently wouldn’t agree to house him.

Elected officials and residents in Niagara Falls were in an uproar because McKinney, whose crimes were committed in North Tonawanda, was being house in the Cataract City. That led to his transfer to the B-Cozy Motel on Niagara Falls Boulevard, on the NT-Wheatfield border. Officials in those two municipalities then cried foul over his proximity to the school and daycare center.

But Kloch said he had in fact ordered McKinney to move out of North Tonawanda to another address prior to his most recent arrest. Kloch declined to say where, adding he didn’t want the issue to once again become a “political football.”

Joined in the courtroom by many of his closest family members, McKinney bore a cut on his nose and had to have an affidavit read aloud to him because his glasses had been broken after he was attacked recently by another inmate.

“Unfortunately, your honor, we are unable to discern anything in print,” Jay said. “He doesn’t have his glasses.”

McKinney chatted briefly with his loved ones before being led out of the court room.

“You stay out of trouble,” he said to one of them.

A court officer declined his request to embrace them.

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