Sex offender gets 16 months

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A federal judge has sentenced a former Boardman resident to 16 months in prison with credit for time already served for failing to register as a sex offender.

U.S. District Court Judge Dan Aaron Polster imposed the sentence Thursday on Scott Lawrence, 62, who entered a halfway house in September 2015 after spending 18 years in federal prison for a 1997 conviction for interstate transportation of a minor for sex.

Lawrence pleaded guilty in March to the failure to register charge.

In a sentencing memorandum, Lawrence’s federal public defenders asked the judge to consider sentencing him to time served, now that he has been incarcerated since Sept. 8 on the failure to register charge.

The public defenders asked that Lawrence be sent to a halfway house for three to six months and allowed to return to the job that awaits him at an Austintown cleaning company, where he previously worked.

Lawrence was arrested after he failed to register with the sheriff on time after being forced to move due to his inability to pay his rent, the memorandum said.

Lawrence went to Indianapolis to take truck-driver training classes without informing his probation officer or the sheriff, and he was arrested before he could finish that training, the defense memorandum said.