Columbia Sex Offender Pleads Guilty To Failure To Register

On September 16, 2013, Devereaux L. Davis, a thirty-six year old Columbia, Illinois, man pled guilty in federal district court, in East St. Louis, for failure to register as a sex offender, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today. Davis is scheduled for sentencing on January 22, 2014, at which time he faces a prison term of up to ten (10) years, a fine up to $250,000, or both, a term of supervised release of five (5) years after his prison term, and a mandatory special assessment of $100.

The violation occurred in 2009, when Davis failed to register within three days of his move from Illinois to Missouri, as required under both Illinois law and the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. Davis had been previously convicted of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse on September 15, 2005, in Monroe County, Illinois. He acknowledged that he understood the conditions of maintaining his sex offender registration requirements by signing an Illinois Sex Offender Registration Act Notification Form on August 14, 2008.

Davis first registered as a sex offender in the State of Missouri on June 25, 2009, only after his arrest on July 17, 2009, in Granite City, Illinois, for failure to register. Davis fled the bi-state area between 2010 and March, 2013. He returned to Missouri and was arrested in St. Louis in April, 2013, on a felony warrant out of Granite City, Illinois. In an interview conducted by the United States Marshal Service for non-compliance, Davis admitted to having lived in Missouri for approximately one year, after signing the Illinois registration notification form and moving out of the state when the violation occurred. Davis had not registered as a sex offender in Missouri, nor had he updated his sex offender registration form in Illinois.

Due to his failure to register in Missouri and his failure to update his registration in Illinois, the defendant was charged federally with Failure to Register as a Sex Offender pursuant to the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

The case was investigated by the United States Marshal Service and is assigned to Assistant United States Attorney Daniel T. Kapsak for prosecution.