Five-time convicted felon and rapist George Morrison does not have to register as a sex offender when he’s released from a federal halfway house in Denver because his cases are too old and didn’t involve children, a district judge has ruled.
Morrison, 70, after it refused to let him register despite a requirement by federal authorities to do so. By not registering, Morrison risked violating his probation and returning to prison.
Morrison’s sex convictions from Kentucky and Ohio are so old that they predate Colorado’s registered sex-offender laws, and none of his victims were children. And the first of those laws in 1992 only required registration for those convicted of sex crimes against minors.
That all changed in about 1994 to include all victims, no matter their age.
But Morrison was released from a Kentucky prison in 1992 on a rape conviction from 1985. The victim in that case was an adult. And the 1994 law only applied to those convicted of sex crimes after July of that year.
“He has never been convicted of an offense including any sexual offense against a child in Colorado, Ohio, Kentucky or anywhere else,” Denver District Judge J. Eric Elliff wrote in deciding the case. “Therefore, he is not required to register under that law.”
Morrison is at the end of a five-year federal sentence for selling guns without a license. He pleaded guilty to the charge in 2013 in order to avoid a likely 15-year term he faced for being a career felon in possession of a firearm.
Morrison managed to stay mostly out of trouble from the time of his 1992 release until the federal gun charge.
He’s been living at Federal Independence House, a halfway house on South Federal Boulevard in Denver, just north of Colorado Heights University, and is expected to be released in May.
At the time of his sentencing federal prosecutors laid out sex-crime convictions dating to 1971 – Morrison still disputes them – that include rape, sodomy, kidnapping “for amoral purposes” and armed robbery. In nearly every case, records show Morrison served only a sliver of the sentences – including just eight years in a Colorado prison on a kidnapping charge in which he was given a 20-year term – then committed more crimes shortly after his release each time.
Morrison’s attorney said he is concerned for the health of his wife, who has a bad liver and cannot be placed on a donor waiting list unless Morrison can ensure he’s able to care for her.
