A man sentenced to more than 300 years for violent sex offenses against children was freed

from prison on Tuesday after a court determined his right to a speedy trial had been violated.

The appellate court ruling, which was allowed to stand by the Colorado Supreme Court, found that the trial was delayed beyond Colorado's speedy-trial requirements.

Michael McFadden, 46, was released from the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility. There is no requirement that he register as a sex offender.

"We are without remedy," Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said. "The thing that is so frustrating is that everybody agrees that every decision was made to the benefit of protecting (McFadden's) right to a speedy trial."

The appellate court found that there was "no question that (McFadden) did not expressly waive" his right to a speedy trial.

The trial was delayed after McFadden's defense sought to include provisions into the juror questionnaire to aid his attorneys in selecting jurors.

The defense already had twice agreed to waive speedy-trial trial requirements, Rubinstein noted.

"We recognize that 'but for' defense counsel's addition of the language into the jury questionnaire, the trial would have gone forward as originally scheduled. However, under the unique circumstances of this case, we cannot attribute the delay to (McFadden)," said the ruling, written by Judge Jerry N. Jones and concurred with by Judges Craig R. Welling and Dennis Graham. "The prosecutor expressly agreed to the jury questionnaire as drafted by defense counsel, and the trial court accepted it as tendered. The language that the trial court ultimately found to be problematic did not violate any existing authority or order of the court, nor would it have resulted in plain error. Because defendant did not agree to or otherwise occasion a necessary continuance, he cannot be charged with the trial delay."

Rubinstein emphasized in an email that McFadden's defense had approved delays.

"I am appalled that our justice system, in which a jury of the defendant's peers, which the defendant helped choose, unanimously found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of sexually offending against six innocent victims, yet the Court of Appeals vacated the convictions after finding that the trial court's efforts to protect the defendant's constitutional rights to a fair trial violate an arbitrary statutory right that the defendant had waived on two prior occasions," Rubinstein said.

McFadden need not register as a sex offender because his convictions were vacated. His previous conviction for sexual assault on a child took place before the requirement that sex offenders publicly register.

The 2015 trial was traumatic for McFadden's victims, prosecutor David Waite said.

It revealed that McFadden selected families with young children, most frequently boys.

"He befriends people who have young kids and then he gets into a situation where he has access to those kids, and he grooms them pretty heavily," Waite said.

McFadden took his victims on four-wheelers and dirt bikes "and then molests them as they are in his care."

There were "a couple ugly incidents at the roller dam" on the Gunnison River just above the Colorado River and most, but not all, of the assaults took place at night, Waite said.

https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/wes...cle_bec7f5d6-1d1e-11e8-ace5-10604b9f7e7c.html

Without knowing more about the case, the fact that he twice waived his right to a speedy trial should have precluded this outcome. This sounds like an absurd result, something must be missing from this explanation.

Karma will catch up with him sooner versus later.

Any dude who wants to ingratiate himself with my family and take my kid out on unsupervised activities is already on my WTF list.

In the recent issue of my local The Jail Report they shared this story:
https://nypost.com/2018/02/01/blind-man-who-raped-13-year-old-girl-gets-probation-avoids-prison/
Anyone who doesn't think justice in the US is a big fucking cosmic joke of a crap-shoot must be one brain-dead motherfucker.

yeah that kind of shit should be a "red flag" to the extreme.

Angry parents will burn him to death with Molotov cocktails, and then he'll come back as a dream demon.

yeah I hate when that happens!

Was this already mentioned before in another thread? I remember commenting about how ridiculous this is, especially in light of how teens are getting tried as adults, thrown in jail, and being forced to register as a sex offender for taking a picture of their own bodies on their cell phones.

It was, can't remember the thread though.

There has to be more to this.