Child enticement charges against a convicted sex offender in Worthington were recently dropped because an Ohio Supreme Court ruling had thrown out part of the statute. Now state lawmakers are trying to fix that part of the law.
After the convicted sex offender tried to entice at least two, possibly more, children into his car, police arrested him on enticement charges only to find out later that part of that law had been deemed unconstitutional in 2014.
The Ohio Supreme Court had ruled the state’s soliciting law was overly broad, possibly criminalizing something as innocent as a senior citizen offering to pay a kid money to mow the lawn. But lawmakers haven’t fixed it since that ruling.
The man is still in jail, under arrest, pending parole review. But Republican state rep. Mike Duffey has proposed a clarification that applies to strangers without any legitimate relationship to a child and also to those with prior sexual offender status.
Duffey says lawmakers need to make sure to fix that law so this doesn’t happen in the future.
