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Press Release
Press Release
WASHINGTON – Daniel Girard Coles, Jr., 46, of Laurel, Md., was sentenced today to eight months in prison on a federal charge of failure to register as a sex offender, announced U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. and Michael Hughes, U.S. Marshal for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Coles has one prior conviction in Maryland for a sex offense involving a minor victim, which requires him to register as a sex offender. Prior to his sex offense conviction, Coles was an officer for the Metropolitan Police Department. According to the government’s evidence, Coles was registering as a sex offender in the District of Columbia, but, between August 2010 and December 2012, he lived in Laurel, Md., and did not register that information with the District of Columbia and, for the majority of that time, did not register that information with the State of Maryland.
Coles pled guilty in January 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of failure to register as a sex offender. He was sentenced by the Honorable John D. Bates. Upon completion of his prison term, Coles will be placed on five years of supervised release.
As part of an overall strategy to combat child exploitation, the U.S. Marshals Service launched a nationwide operation in 2010 to target sex offenders who knowingly fail to comply with their sex offender registration requirements. The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act is part of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006. The Adam Walsh Act also provides for the use of federal law enforcement resources, including the U.S. Marshals Service, to assist the states in locating and apprehending non-compliant sex offenders.
In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Machen and U.S. Marshal Hughes praised the members of the D.C. Superior Court Sex Offender Investigations Section of the U.S. Marshals Service, who investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cassidy Kesler Pinegar, who prosecuted the case.
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