A 19-year-old Indiana man convicted of a sex offense after a teenaged girl lied about her age on a hookup app is asking a court to vacate his sentence, alleging that prosecutors broke the plea agreement, the defense attorney said Wednesday.
Lawyer Scott Grabel and his client Zach Anderson are expected to appear Wednesday before a judge in Niles, Michigan, and ask the court for a new sentencing before a different judge, Grabel said.
Grabel accuses the prosecution of not staying neutral during the sentencing of Anderson as required under the plea agreement, Grabel said.
Prosecutors couldn’t be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
“Our goal is to get this case resentenced in front of a different judge, because the law mandates if the prosecutor violates their plea agreement, then it should be sent to a different judge for possible resentencing, or if we want to withdraw the plea and go to retrial that may be an option, as well,” Grabel told CNN.
Anderson met the girl on the dating app “Hot Or Not,” but the 14-year-old girl lied about her age, claiming she was 17. She lived in southern Michigan, close to Anderson’s parents’ home in Elkhart, Indiana.
By having sex with her, Anderson committed a crime. He was given a 90-day jail sentence, five years probation, and placed on both Indiana’s and Michigan’s sex offender registry for the next 25 years.
Both the girl’s mother and the girl herself had earlier appeared in court, to say they didn’t believe Zach belonged on the sex offender registry.
The girl admitted lying and outside of court, she handed the Anderson family a letter. She wrote in part, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my age. It kills me every day, knowing you are going through hell and I’m not. I want to be in trouble and not you.”
But even if the sex was consensual and even if the girl did lie about her age, it is not a defense under current sex offender laws.
Anderson’s attorney is striving to get the entire case dismissed.
“I don’t certainly speak for the public in general, but the comments I’ve read nationally think that his whole life shouldn’t be ruined by his decision to go on a date and obviously have sexual relations with that person, especially when that person in all honesty misrepresented their true age,” Grabel said.
Under court order, Anderson can’t access the Internet, go to a mall, or linger near a school or playground. His parents say because he has a 15-year-old brother, he can’t even live at home any longer.
Judge Dennis Wiley, who sentenced Zach, earlier said he was angry that Zach had used the Internet to meet a girl.
“That seems to be part of our culture now,” he said, according to a transcript. “Meet, have sex, hook up, sayonara. Totally inappropriate behavior. There is no excuse for this whatsoever.”
A former judge in a nearby town said the sex offender registry has to be changed. Especially for cases like Zach’s.
“If we caught every teenager that violated our current law,” said former Judge William Buhl, “we’d lock up 30 or 40% of the high school. We’re kidding ourselves.”
Buhl said the problem is that the registry is a one-size-fits-all list that treats everyone as if they pose the same threat, whether they are a predatory child molester or a teen who had sex with his girlfriend.