By Conrad Dudderar
Associate Editor
EL RENO – A Yukon man has been convicted of failure to register as a sex offender.
Matthew Wayne Ross, 43, pleaded guilty to the felony crime on Sept. 19 in Canadian County District Court. A jury trial had been set for Oct. 2.
Ross already was a convicted sex offender when he was formally charged on June 30, 2022 for not telling the Yukon Police Department where he was staying. He was booked eight days earlier at the Canadian County Jail.
The defendant appeared for a Sept. 19th court hearing with his attorney Zac Ramsey to enter a negotiated plea.
Canadian County District Judge Paul Hesse accepted the plea, found Ross guilty and sentenced him to serve two years in state prison.
Ross was ordered to pay a $50 fine and $50 victim’s compensation assessment.
As part of the plea agreement between prosecutors and the defense, a second felony count was dismissed – sex offender living within 2,000 feet/loitering within 500 feet of a licensed child-care facility.
Ross on June 18, 2022 “did fail to register as a sex offender with the Yukon Police Department” while living in the City of Yukon “for a period of more than three days,” according to the charging document.
The defendant reportedly was “residing/living” at a storage unit at 450 S Ranchwood near a child development center.
Because of previous felony convictions, Ross had faced four years to life in prison for failing to register as a sex offender.
Ross was convicted in January 2000 of first-degree rape and forcible oral sodomy in Oklahoma County District Court.
He also was convicted in January 2009 for failure to comply with the sex offender registration act in Oklahoma County and in October 2020 with failure to register as a sex offender in Canadian County.
Ross spent two separate stints in prison during 2009-11 and 2017-19 but had been on probation for more than three years, Oklahoma Department of Corrections’ records show.
THEY MUST REGISTER
The Oklahoma Sex Offenders Registration Act of 1989 requires convicted sex offenders to register in person “with the local law enforcement authority having jurisdiction in the area where the person resides or intends to reside … within three days after entering the jurisdiction of law enforcement authority.”
State law also makes it unlawful for registered sex offenders to reside “either temporarily or permanently” with a 2,000-foot radius of any public or private school site, educational institution, playground, park, licensed childcare center, or family childcare home.
