Wrongly imprisoned, accused of a crime he didn't commit, and unable to defend himself, Mr. Morris is engaged in a monumental fight to clear his name...

Thank you for visiting my site. I’ve created this platform to share my story with those who have known me for a long time and are shocked by the accusations made against me. You’re likely familiar with what’s been reported in the media, but I want to provide you with the full details of what happened.

After reading this site, you'll discover the full story, including details that have never before been made public. You'll also learn the reasons why I couldn't allow these details to be revealed in court, leaving my conviction nothing more than a formality.

Please bear with me as I provide some background information. I have faced significant back issues throughout my life, with degenerative disc disease and arthritis being the most challenging problems. Beginning around 2005, my doctors began prescribing opioids to alleviate the pain. Initially, these medications proved effective, but as time passed, my tolerance to them grew, and their effectiveness diminished. Consequently, my doctors prescribed higher and higher doses of opioids. I relied on these narcotics continuously for about six years, and like millions of others who later became part of what is now known as the 'opioid epidemic,' I developed a physical addiction to them.

After taking them for six years, one by one my doctors decided I was taking too many opioids, and began to cut me off from them. It was because of them cutting me off from them that I learned how to get opioids without a doctor or prescription. Shortly after they cut me off from them, I had surgery to fuse discs in my back and neck that were the source of my decades of pain, and the genesis of my physical dependency on opioids.

The post-operative pain from the fusing of several discs in my back was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Over a six-month period following my surgery while under post-operative care, I went from being prescribed Dilaudid, to Oxycontin, then Roxycodone, then Vicodin, and finally just NSAIDs to deal with the residual pain from the surgery.

The arthritis I have in my spine is also very prevalent throughout my body, especially in my knees and shoulders, and I had many surgeries on both knees and both shoulders in the years following my back surgery and prior to being arrested in 2017. After each of those surgeries I was again prescribed narcotics for post-operative pain. I lost count, but estimate that between surgeries on my knees and shoulders, I had six (or possibly seven or eight) surgeries in the four years between my back surgery and the time I was arrested.

In August 2017, during my employment as a Systems Engineer at Union Pacific Railroad, I re-injured my surgically-reconstructed shoulder. The incident occurred while I was attempting to prevent a portable radio tower from toppling over and colliding with a company vehicle. The consequences of this action necessitated another surgical procedure on my shoulder. The surgery was scheduled to take place on December 19th, 2017.

The surgeon who was seeing me for this injury was unaware of the tolerance I'd built up to opioid medications over the years, or that I was abusing opioids. I didn't want to tell him out of fear of him not prescribing anything for the pain I was experiencing from the injury. I was worried that I may have to live with that excruciating pain for the next few months while waiting for the operation to repair my shoulder from the damage caused when I tried to catch a heavy, falling portable radio tower. As such, he prescribed the standard dose that someone without such a tolerance would require to manage the pain I was having from my injury while waiting to have surgery. So, knowing how to go about getting 'supplemental pain medication', I went back to the people and places I'd gotten it over the years.

Aside from some sketchy guys I knew in the area who sometimes could provide me with narcotics, I'd long ago found out I could get them on the Internet. Early on (long before my injury) there was a site called backpage.com where one could get just about anything they wanted. The feds eventually shut down that site.

Please forgive me for the graphic nature of upcoming parts of this article.

It took me a while to figure out where the people selling opioids on backpage.com had moved, but I eventually found them on craigslist in the personal ads section, specifically in the men-seeking-men section. The buyers and sellers got really creative in there, tying the type of drug you were seeking to specific sexual acts to cover themselves in case law enforcement was trying to trap them. (I'll explain more in a little bit, but basically if the people trading drugs for money were caught/entrapped during the transaction, they could say they weren't meeting their customer or supplier for drugs, rather, for the specific sexual encounter talked about on the craigslist site.) I don't know much about the other types of drugs because all I ever was looking for was Oxycontin. I did learn about some of them (again, not because I was looking for them...the people from whom I'd buy pain meds told me how to go about getting other kinds of medication if I ever wanted.). For instance, if you were ostensibly looking for 'unprotected anal sex', that was their code for methamphetamines. Another example is 'a group of three guys looking for a fourth' was code for MDMA (ecstasy). And so on. Again, I wasn't looking for any of those drugs, so I don't know (or don't remember, if I ever knew) the details. But you could get just about any type of medication you wanted. The code for Oxycontin or similar meds was oral sex. The code for high-potency Oxycontin was non-reciprocated oral sex. There were other variations on this theme, but I was never trying to buy anything other than Oxycontin, Dilaudid, Roxymorphone, etc. In other words, pain meds.

I used craigslist until they shut down their personal ads section due to what I was told was pressure from (or fear of) the feds. I wasn't too worried because I had found a couple of guys that, while sketchy, had become somewhat-reliable sources from whom to get opioids if I wanted them. This was better than using the Internet because of the reliability. Using the Internet necessitated posting an ad, then going out and driving around the city until hopefully someone saw your post, and recognized it as a solicitation not for sex, but for drugs.

After craigslist shut down their personal ads section, the sellers moved to a cellphone app called Grindr. Grindr is used almost exclusively by gay men looking to hook up. Grindr made it easier than either backpage or craigslist because the Grindr app has geolocation services built into it. That made it (usually) a breeze to find the person selling because he could just “drop a pin”, and the app would provide turn-by-turn directions on how to get to him. I wasn't familiar with most of the city (Omaha) where I was meeting these sellers on Grindr, so the directions were extremely helpful.

The day I was arrested (Dec 15th - five days before my surgery was scheduled to repair my injured shoulder), I left work early. It was a Friday afternoon, and a coworker and I went out drinking for a few hours. Afterward, we parted ways. Before I left Omaha to head to my home some 45 miles away, I went to Grindr to find one last batch of pain pills to help with the pain until my surgery on Tuesday. I posted an ad on Grindr, the contents of which was code for 'I'm looking for high-potency Oxycontin and I'm mobile', meaning that I was looking to buy Oxycontin that was at least 40 mg, and that I could come to their place if they didn't want to meet someplace. (Some people selling pain pills wanted to meet; others preferred you come to them. I tried to make it easy by offering them their preference.)

I then started driving around the city, hoping someone with pain meds would respond. (Unless you paid for it, Grindr limited the number of people you can see to about 50 if I remember right. And it sorts them by distance, only showing you the 50 that are the closest. So driving around provided the greatest chance of finding someone selling them. Most of the users of Grindr were not selling pain meds; driving around the city would cycle through different people in hopes that someone selling meds would see the ad and recognize it as someone looking to buy meds.) True to the norm, it wasn't long before someone contacted me.

The average user on Grindr didn’t know the difference of a “regular” ad or if the person who posted it was in fact looking to buy meds. In fact, as it was with craigslist, more often than not the responses I received were for people actually looking for sex. Maybe one in one hundred (or less) were selling drugs. The way you'd know is once they made contact, there were codes in the way you conversed that made it clear for which it was you were looking. In order to minimize or remove the chance of getting caught up in a drug bust, when you found someone who was selling it was standard practice to converse back and forth using really sexually-explicit language. This would make it appear as if it was an actual hook-up in case the law was perhaps surveilling the seller. (The law typically doesn't care nearly as much, if at all, about the person buying opioids - it's the sellers and dealers they're after.) So once the contact was made and intent established, it was usual for the conversation to turn fairly sexually-explicit. That way, if there was a wiretap of some sort, or if the police were able to get into the phones to use as evidence if there actually was a bust, there would be plausible deniability of the drug transaction. (It would look like a casual hook-up.)

After I had gotten a message ostensibly from a seller, it proceeded like many other times before. Each of us were following the codes and using the typical diversionary tactics; raunchy talk, explicit acts, etc. Even with the geolocation pin the guy had dropped on my phone, I had a very difficult time finding the way to his place. At one point, I had him call me to try to talk me to his location because the pin drop wasn't accurate. While on the phone, I confirmed with him that he indeed had the pain meds I wanted.

When I arrived at his house (a trailer actually) he was standing outside in a hoodie. We went into the trailer. He was a scruffy, disheveled guy, not unlike guys from which I'd purchased pain meds in the past. It wasn't long though after entering his trailer that I began to suspect that something was wrong. It became obvious that the guy wanted more from me than money for pain pills when he asked me to have sex with him.

I told him no, that I was there to buy pain meds, and that if he didn't have them I'd be on my way. He said that he had them, but that he wanted to 'have some fun first'. When it became clear to him that I wasn't going to have sex with him, he asked if I would 'just perform oral sex on him'. When I told him no, he asked if he could perform oral sex on me. I again told him no and that if he didn't have the pain meds, I was leaving. He then said that if I would just watch him masturbate, I could have them as soon as he finished, and that he’d give me a better price “for my trouble”.

I had no sexual interest in this guy, nor in any guy for that matter, and I did not want to watch him masturbate. However, being in as much pain as I was in from the injury I'd suffered, being out of the pain meds my surgeon had given me, and knowing how much worse the pain was going to get were I unable to find pain meds, I reluctantly agreed to watch. He commenced to masturbating, stopping occasionally to spit in his hand for lubrication. After repeating this a few times, he stopped, held out his hand, and asked me to spit in it because he was 'dry', and that 'it would be so hot', and he'd 'get finished faster'. Being in a hurry to get my pain meds and get out of there, I complied.

About twenty or thirty seconds later, he suddenly got a terrified look on his face, stopped masturbating, jumped up out of his chair, pulled up his sweatpants, and said 'you have to go. There's a door in the back. Use it.'. I didn't know what was going on. It turns out his family had pulled up outside and was coming in the front door. I left out the back door (after I eventually found it), and headed back to my car. I was upset about not getting the Oxy I had gone there to buy, and was mad at myself for believing this guy had the drugs I wanted when it was obvious from the start that something was awry. Once I got back to my car, I got even more mad when I realized I'd left my new iPhone in the trailer. Seeing no reason that I shouldn’t, I went back to the trailer and began knocking on the door in an effort to get my phone back. (I also held a concealed carry permit. Not knowing exactly what I was going to face with the family now home and not knowing if they were going to become violent or intend to cause me harm, I took my handgun along with me. I really didn’t expect that I’d have to defend myself, but with concealed carry, it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.) When I arrived back at their trailer, the people inside wouldn’t open the door. I knocked on both doors, walking back and forth between the one I came into initially, and the one I left through when the family came home. But instead of answering/opening the door and giving me my phone, they had called the police.

The police showed up and put me in handcuffs. The first words out of my mouth were to tell them about the handgun I was carrying. I told them I had a concealed carry permit, and that I was carrying a concealed weapon. As would be expected, they took it. They then asked me why I was there, to which I told them I left my phone inside the trailer. They asked me why I had been in the trailer and I said 'to see my friend.' They asked what my friend’s name was, to which I had no answer. Again, believing that I'd not committed any crime and being completely cooperative, I went so far as to ask them if they would go in and get my phone and bring it to me. I even told them the password to my phone as proof that it was mine when they found it, hoping they would just give it back to me so I could be on my way. Instead, they put me in the back of their police car while they went in to talk to the people inside.

I wasn’t privy to the conversation in the trailer. The police report indicated the guy inside the trailer changed his story several times. First, he told them I was there to buy a video game. Next, he said I was there to sell a video game. Then it changed to a Sony Playstation. I don't know and can't prove what happened next, but I will go to my grave believing that the police unlocked my phone using the password I had given them, saw the explicit conversation, and led the guy, scared the guy, or both, into getting him to tell them that I'd had sex with him. As I said earlier, those conversations are explicit, and they work as designed, but the one thing they require to protect you is for both people to be of legal age to do the things talked about in the app. Ultimately, he settled on the claim that I performed oral sex on him, which is what the entire conversation was about that was supposed to protect us (him) from getting arrested for selling drugs if we got caught.

A side thought: Had I not given the police the password to my phone, I think things would have possibly turned out far differently. What I think happened is that the police unlocked my phone (which would have opened right up to the conversation in the Grindr app since I was using it to converse with the guy while driving to his place). I think they saw the conversation, and used that information to “persuade” the guy to ultimately make his accusation. He was a teenager, and I think he was terrified with everything taking place around him and very open to suggestions made by the six or seven police officers interrogating him about the situation.

The police came back out to the car and told me I was under arrest for first degree sexual assault of a minor. I think they said some more things, but at that point I was in complete shock and disbelief. (For background, from 1989 through 2017 I'd raised six children in my house, four of them from the time they were born, and two step-children that moved into my house at very young ages (four and six). Over their entire K-12 school years, hundreds of children came to my house to spend nights and weekends with my kids. I never accosted (nor did I think about accosting) a single one of them.) I did not and do not have a thing for abusing kids, sexually or otherwise, and abhor those who do.

They locked me up in jail that night (Friday) and I stayed there until Tuesday morning. I'd never been in jail before, and was suffering from culture shock maybe? I don't know what it was from which I was suffering. But being in that jail was nothing compared to what was to come when they threw me in prison almost a year and a half later.

I contacted a lawyer who was able to convince the judge to release me on bond. My daughter and two of my sons came to the bond hearing. While my daughter was paying the bond, the mother of the person alleging I'd sexually assaulted her son was in the same room where my daughter was paying my bond. My daughter was eight months pregnant at the time. The guy's mother, and possibly some siblings or friends who were there with her, began to excoriate and verbally assault my daughter who, again, was eight months pregnant. My son stepped in between them because apparently the courthouse employees in the room couldn't be bothered with keeping this hysterical woman away from my daughter who had done nothing wrong to anyone. (Keep this event in mind, because this psychopathic behavior she unleashed on my daughter is important to this story later on.) I'm not faulting the mom for being extremely upset at that point. Given what she had been told, I would have been upset too were I in her place. But my daughter hadn't done anything to her.

After my daughter posted my bond, I thanked my attorney and told him I would email him with all the details of the events of Dec. 15th, and my daughter and I left. She took me straight from jail to the hospital where my shoulder surgery was to happen in less than an hour.

I was in the hospital for only a day. It was outpatient arthroscopic surgery. If I recall correctly, my daughter picked me up, and I think I spent that night with her and her husband, then went back home the next day. (I was taking a lot of medication that day and may have the timeline a little off, but I think this is accurate.) After I got home I went to my bedroom, took a handful of pain pills, and drifted off to sleep, hoping that when I woke up that this was all just a bad dream.

Of course, it wasn’t. And it got even worse.

A few days following my surgery, one of the guys from whom I would occasionally purchase pain meds sent me a Telegram text on my computer. He let me know he had some Oxycontin and asked if I was interested. (Telegram is an end-to-end encrypted messaging program that is often used by people who are discussing things they want to keep private, or don't want to fall into the wrong hands.) I told him no, but that I wanted to meet up with him to tell him something important. When he came to my house, I met him in the driveway. He asked about my arm being in a sling. After I explained that I'd just had surgery, I told him (though not in as much detail) the relevant parts of what I've told you on this webpage. I told him that because I was in trouble with the law already, I didn't want to potentially exacerbate things by continuing to illegally purchase pain pills. I told him that I wouldn't be a customer for the foreseeable future, if ever. And I told him I planned to tell the court everything (probably in even greater detail than I've told you on this webpage); that I was confident I would be found not guilty, especially since, while it is true I was indeed doing something illegal on that night (buying prescription drugs), that I was in no way guilty of what they were alleging.

Later that night, I got a Telegram text on my computer from an account I didn't recognize. The text told me in no uncertain terms that if anything came out in my trial that implicated the people from whom I'd been buying pain meds, they would come after my family... that my wife and kids would suffer. They went so far as to include some detailed information about my wife and kids (their names etc.) that they apparently gleaned from Facebook or other social media pages, presumably to make their threat seem more credible.

An overwhelming sense of fear fell over me. Apart from buying meds from these guys, I knew nothing about them or what they were capable of. The police had confiscated my phone, and I had no idea what they'd find if they had a reason to dig into it for evidence of drug transactions. I couldn’t remember what text messages were on my phone, didn't know whether the police could hack Telegram, or even if I had saved my login information to automatically access the app. I was also unsure if anything in the phone logs could implicate these guys in our previous transactions. At that point, the DA had no reason to look beyond the Grindr conversation they were likely using to substantiate their case against me. But there was no way I was going to give them a reason to dig further into my phone. My biggest fear was that if I revealed anything about my phone activities related to seeking out pain meds, they would scrutinize my phone and potentially trace the identities of the guys from whom I bought pain meds in the past and who were now making threats against my family. If those guys were questioned or arrested and found out my phone was the reason, they might make good on their threat against my family. I would never risk my kids' safety, especially not over something that was my fault or in an effort to get myself acquitted.

As I said, I told my attorney at my bond hearing that I would email him with all the events that happened the night I was arrested so that he could start preparing my defense. But now, how could I? How could I tell him about the pain meds I went to buy, when the people I love more than my own life were being threatened if I did, or if details about the people from whom I bought opioids got out to law enforcement?

And it wasn’t just my lawyer I couldn't tell, but my family as well. They all wanted to know why their dad/brother/son/uncle had gotten arrested and charged with doing such a horrible thing.

And now, I couldn’t tell them.

I thought about it for a couple of days. I tried to come up with as truthful of a chain of events as I could for my attorney while still remaining somewhat vague. Eventually I came up an email to my attorney, deliberately avoiding any reference to my acquisition of pain meds for reasons that should be obvious at this point. However, everything I put in the email was true. The email I wrote to my attorney contained a lot of diversionary and irrelevant statements that, while potentially explaining certain circumstances about what had happened, in reality had nothing to do with the night I was arrested.

Over the course of the next fourteen months, I periodically met with my attorney. His investigation discovered that this guy not only lured me into his lair, but had a history of using Grindr and the Internet to chase after older men. A local television station (KETV) discovered one of his trysts that occurred while his father was in the hospital. He would go and visit his father, and while visiting him would excuse himself, and sneak out to the parking garage to meet older men for sex in the parking garage while visiting his father in the hospital. link to article

When they released the news of my arrest and picture to one of the local television stations (they didn’t do that until April 2018), they had the mugshots of two more men on the same screen as me. These I presume are the ones he was meeting in the hospital parking garage. If not, then there were two more men in addition to the ones he was meeting in the parking garage. I had no clue who they were, but the local media presented the story as if I was part of whatever the other two were accused of doing with my accuser. The way they reported the story made it appear that I was part of some interstate sex group that went around sexually assaulting teenage boys. And of course, everyone at my work saw that, and I couldn't tell them (or anyone) anything to dispute it for the reason I've mentioned.

I don't know how many people were ultimately arrested and charged because of this guy. As my attorney pointed out to the DA, it's obvious that "this guy is a pro at luring older men to meet him for sex". (my attorney's words)

I felt bad for my attorney. He was really hamstrung in trying to defend me due to no fault of his own. There were two things working against him. One, I didn't tell him everything (or anything useful for that matter) for the reasons I've described. So he really didn’t have much with which to work in my defense. And two, the actions of the District Attorney. The DA appeared to me to be far more interested in padding his conviction numbers than arriving at the truth. While I won’t outright accuse him of prosecutorial misconduct, his actions seemed to prioritize winning the case over uncovering the truth.

The crime with which I was charged (a Class 1A felony) carried a possible sentence of 1-50 years, with a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence. That means that if I took it to court and was found guilty, I'd have to do 15 years in prison before I could even begin to earn time towards being considered for parole. Had the judge given me the maximum penalty, the way Nebraska calculates prison time would mean I'd be in prison for at least 25 to 30 years before I could become parole eligible.

The reason I say he was more interested in padding his conviction stats than getting to the truth is the DA told me (through my attorney), in writing, that if we were to depose the guy who accused me of this, that 'all plea offers are off the table'. I sincerely think that if my attorney could have gotten that guy into a deposition room that the guy would have folded and came clean, that the deception would have been exposed, and the DA would have dropped the charges altogether. But that was a HUGE risk. He may not have folded. He may not have told the truth. Then what? I'd be looking at what at my age would amount to a life sentence for me if I was found guilty. And since I couldn’t tell my attorney about the drugs, he wouldn’t know to press (or even mention the selling of pain meds) in a deposition. I'd be dependent upon the guy slipping up in deposition. I was only around him for perhaps three minutes in total, but he came across to me as fairly-intelligent. So I had little hope he'd mess up while being deposed and mention the drug charade.

I considered my options for many days, but finally told my attorney no, don't depose him. It just wasn't worth the risk. Knowing that if the guy didn't crack, that my attorney would go into the trial of my life fighting for me with both hands tied behind his back, all because I couldn't tell him all the facts. I would be playing Russian Roulette with a jury of twelve people who didn't know me. I'd be in a popularity contest with a teenager who would be portrayed to the jury as the picture of innocence and me being portrayed as the worst kind of monster imaginable.

And I likely would have lost. After all, because I had spit in the guy's hand while he was masturbating, my DNA was found on his genitals. I couldn't explain that without tipping my hand and revealing the real reason I was there. I had no plausible explanation (that I was willing to tell) as to why I was there at his trailer in the first place. There was the graphic text conversation back and forth between us. I couldn't explain that without framing the reason it (the Grindr text conversation) was there and its purpose. I couldn't do that without putting my family at risk. I have no idea how many past conversations from previous drug transactions remained on my phone - past conversations that were designed intentionally to look like hook-ups for the same reason as the one I've described in this website... conversations that were designed to provide plausible deniability of purchasing pain meds by creating the illusion of a sexual encounter. Were I sitting on that jury and heard all the damning evidence in the way the DA would have surely presented it (with no credible defense of myself) I probably would have found me guilty as well.

No, I just told my attorney that I couldn't risk that much time if I was found guilty. I would enter a plea of nola contendre (no contest) or Alfred plea, not admitting guilt, but not going to trial because given the evidence, I'd likely be convicted, and hope that the judge didn't give me a long sentence. (Even the sentence for the Class 2A felony could be up to 50 years, but it didn't come with the mandatory minimum 15 years at the front of it.) I had zero criminal record, and had an excellent standing and reputation in my community and among those who knew me. Many people wrote character reference letters about me to the court. I just hoped and prayed it would all be sufficient to keep me from spending most or all of the rest of my life in prison.

I think pleading no contest was the best option between two terrible choices. Prior to getting sentenced, I had to do a pre-sentencing interview (PSI) with a lady named Holly. In her PSI report, Holly got many things wrong. There were many outright factual errors contained in the report. Where she got them I have no idea. They included erroneous dates, occupations, and what must’ve been her own assumptions based on what she heard or thought she heard from me and/or whomever else she interviewed.

She asked me about many things where the content was wrong. Instead of correcting her, I allowed her to believe what she had put into her PSI report. I let Holly believe many things that were not true or that didn’t happen exactly the way she was reporting them. Letting Holly believe all her assumptions was my fault, but again, I was still in defense mode. At this point, protecting my family was my goal; I let her believe anything that contributed to that end.

My sentence was 8-16 years. I was a model prisoner, and was constantly asked by even my case managers, “What are you doing here? You are out of place in prison. You don't belong here.” (And they were right. I didn't belong there.) But it was what it was. I followed all the rules, and was respectful to staff. I caused no trouble. In all the time I was incarcerated, I received not a single write-up/misconduct report nor verbal admonishment from staff. At no time did staff ever have to raise their voice with me. My behavior contributed to me being granted the earliest possible parole. Still, I spent four long years in prison; two months in the diagnostics and evaluation center, two and a half years at Nebraska State Penitentiary, one year at Omaha Correctional Center, and eight months at Community Corrections Center in Omaha (work release). While in prison, I saw and heard things I'll never be able to forget, about which I still have nightmares.

You may be wondering why I felt I couldn't share the details of the night I was arrested, even with my family. The reason is simple: I know my family. They would have insisted that I tell my attorney everything, no matter the risk to themselves. And if I refused, they - especially my kids, and especially my daughter - would have told him anyway. I couldn’t take that risk. Because of this, I kept what happened that night to myself, not telling a soul.

At this point, I feel okay talking about it here. I'm sure the guys who made the original threats against my family have moved on, or gotten caught, or have forgotten about me. I don't remember their names. I don't know that I ever knew their real names. Enough time has passed that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement officials to back-trace the steps required to pursue them. I would be no help as, like I said, I never knew their real names, and couldn’t describe them even if I wanted to.

I also have to point out the following items that lead me to believe that someone in the system may have had an inkling that something was awry; that someone knew or had a suspicion that I hadn’t done the things with which I was charged, and that this possibility may have played into the relatively light-ish sentence I received. (I refer you back to what I said earlier about the DA being more interested in padding his conviction record than arriving at the truth. The overly-aggressive prosecution carried out by this and possibly other DAs in Nebraska helps explain why Nebraska recently passed Alabama as having the most overcrowded prisons in the United States.) link

One: When someone is convicted of a sex offense in Nebraska, it's almost automatic that they have to take one of two 'sex offender treatment' courses while in prison; either “oHelp“ (outpatient sex offender treatment), or “iHelp” (in-patient sex offender treatment). Over a two-day period, I was interviewed extensively by a psycho-sexual mental health psychiatrist. Based on that interview and those conducted by their own mental health professionals, I was given a letter by the State of Nebraska’s Clinical Sex Offender Review Team - CSORT (Click here to view the letter I was given by CSORT) that stated I wasn't a candidate for either oHelp or iHelp; that I didn't have to take sex-offender treatment. That alone should raise eyebrows to anyone reviewing what happened to me - not requiring sex offender treatment for someone who was initially charged with sexually assaulting a minor? I knew people in prison who were charged with something much less-severe than sexually assaulting a minor; people who, like me, had no prior arrest record or criminal history, but still had to take oHelp or iHelp because they had committed a sex crime. If the State of Nebraska truly felt I did these things (or committed any sort of sex crime - especially against a minor), wouldn't it stand to reason they'd have put me through at least the outpatient treatment? I have to wonder if the guy from the trailer may have told the DA (or someone on the prosecution team) something about why I was really there; that my reason for being there was to buy pain meds, and that he had tricked me into coming there so that he could have sex, and admit to them that I hadn't actually come there looking for sex. (Again, remember the possibility of the DA being more interested in his conviction record than getting to the truth.) Based on the absence of any sex offender programming being imposed on me, one can't help but think the prosecution and the state knew more about what really happened (and why I was really at that trailer, along with what happened, and more-importantly, what didn't happen) than they let on.

They did require me to take substance abuse treatment. They did not require me to take any sex offender treatment. Why would they do that...? On the record, the DA knew nothing about me being at that trailer to buy pain meds, nor did he know about the opioid dependency I'd developed over the past deacade. But was he told something, or did he learn something off the record? There was no mention in any court document that I was involved with pain meds when I was arrested. Yet I was forced to attend substance abuse treatment while I was incarcerated. But nothing at all related to a sex offense.

Two: The parents of the person I was accused of assaulting didn’t provide a Victim Impact Statement to the pre-sentence investigator. Remember how his mother verbally assaulted my eight-months-pregnant daughter at my bond hearing? (This PSI interview took place nearly a year and a half after I was first arrested and charged.) Is there any doubt that if the parents still believed, almost 18 months later, that I had sexually assaulted their son, they would have at least submitted a Victim Impact Statement to ensure I received the maximum sentence possible? Or, is it more likely that during that year and a half, they learned the truth from their son? Perhaps his other sexual antics (like the incident in the hospital parking garage while visiting his father, and possibly others) led them to let sleeping dogs lie, rather than draw attention to their son’s deviant behavior, or their own poor judgment and irresponsible parenting?

Three: The parole board sent notifications to the family (which included angry mother) and to the community that I had a parole hearing to decide if I should be granted parole, giving them the opportunity to object to me being given parole. Neither the family nor the guy who lured me to his trailer that set this entire ordeal into motion bothered to call, write a letter, show up at my parole hearing, or even so much as send a simple email opposing me being granted parole. Given the hysterical outrage at my daughter when she was paying my bond, it would stand to reason some residual anger would have prompted at least one of them (at least the mom?) to object to me being released. But none did.

One last point: Why were his parents not charged with child neglect? Who is responsible for ignoring the behavior of their teenage son while the teenager, time and again, puts himself in harm's way by repeatedly soliciting sex from anonymous men on the Internet?

So these are the details of the facts and events that happened and that sent me to prison. I know that every person who gets convicted of something claims to be innocent. I'm not saying that about me. I definitely made poor decisions. I definitely should not have been trying to illegally purchase prescription pain meds. When I first had a bad feeling about being in that trailer; when I felt that this guy was up to more than peddling pain meds, I should have left. What I am saying however is that I was not and am not guilty of the charges against me. I did not sexually assault (nor did I attempt to sexually assault) anyone.

The reason I've created this website are twofold: First, I want people to know the truth about what happened to me. I've purposely not written anything here describing the treatment I received or the horrible experiences I had while I was incarcerated. I may pursue that later in another section on this site. My primary purpose was to explain in great detail what happened to me and why I ended up in prison.

Second, I'm hoping I will be able to find an attorney who can help me address this injustice. Part of the punishment meted out on me by the court is that I have to register as a sex offender, likely for the rest of my life if I am unsuccessful in getting that requirement changed. I have to tell you - this is the most degrading, embarrassing, insulting thing I've ever had to do. When I came to Missouri and went to register, because I was convicted in another state (Nebraska), Missouri automatically classified me (with absolutely no regard as to the details or facts surrounding the case) as 'Tier III' which is reserved for the worst of the worst. (Even the lady getting my information to enter into the registry said to me while she was entering the information into the registry that I should be Tier I, “if that”.) In reality I shouldn't be a Tier anything. I'm hoping to be able to hire an attorney to not only help me get off the registry, but to help me apply for and receive a pardon, and ultimately have my record expunged. I have no idea of the costs involved, nor how long it will take. Or if it’s even possible. Because politicians are loathe to do anything that could be seen as aiding and abetting even a wrongly-accused sex offender, I don't hold out much hope for any of them to actually have the guts to do this. But I have to try. Also, I had to enter into something called an "Interstate Compact" between NE and MO in order for me to be allowed to live in MO while I was on parole. (One of the requirements for this is that I had to enroll in and pay for sex offender "treatment" in MO. This, despite the fact that I was evaluated for two days by a psychotherapist in Omaha, and by the Nebraska Clinical Sex Offender Review Team of psychologists and psychiatrists who determined I was not a candidate for such "treatment"... MO just arbitrarily mandates that "treatment" without regard to necessity. Throughout this paragraph you'll note that I include the word "treatment" in quotes when referring to the activity that Missouri's Interstate Compact requires. There are many good reasons for referring to "treatment" in this manner. I'll be talking in detail about this farcical requirement in an entirely separate section on this site when I can do so without fear of repercussion. There are so many things of which to make the public aware regarding what has become, at least for me, nothing less than legalized and state-endorsed extortion.)

I would be remiss if I didn't add that I'm very sorry for all the pain I've caused to so many people, especially to my family. I wish I'd have made better decisions. I accept responsibility for what happened. I couldn’t be any more sorry for the pain I've caused.

I'd like to close with these thoughts: There are moments in life when one must stand up for moral and ethical principles. I find myself in such a situation - entangled in a tragic web of circumstance. Faced with an agonizing choice, I was forced to make an impossible decision: to either defend myself against an allegation that couldn't have been more wrong and risk my family's safety, or to plead no contest and hope for the best. With my family's well-being hanging in the balance, I chose the latter path.

True justice should never demand such a compromise.

To those who may have had doubts as they read through this, I understand your skepticism. The enormity of my challenge to convince others of what I went through hit me one afternoon while talking to my brother. I told him how much I was looking forward to telling my story to the world and explaining to my friends what happened in detail. He replied, "if they will believe you." I'm planning on living in the rural community where I grew up - partially because I always planned on living there after I retired, and now, because many people still live there who knew me before I left to join the military back in 1985, and the kind of person I am. My brother pointing out the possibility that some may not believe my story hadn't occurred to me, and hit me like a ton of bricks.

The belief that our legal system is infallible is deeply ingrained. Our faith in the legal system runs deep, and the idea of an innocent person behind bars can seem unfathomable and difficult to accept. I grew up in a law-enforcement family, and for most of my life, I too believed this. However, I ask that you maintain an open mind. Prosecutors, like all individuals, are susceptible to errors. Some may pursue convictions with unbridled zeal, potentially overlooking or ignoring vital evidence in their pursuit of victory. This is particularly true in cases involving allegations of sexual offenses or when ambition and political aspirations motivate them and drive their actions. My story serves as a stark reminder of the pitfalls within a sometimes flawed justice system — a system where even the innocent can find themselves unjustly convicted.

Within the shadows of our legal history lie countless untold stories, obscured truths, and the undeniable reality of wrongful convictions. History attests to the ability to correct these injustices. My case is not an anomaly; it is but one chapter in a broader narrative where the justice system has, at times, failed the very individuals it is meant to protect. Our unwavering commitment should lie in bringing these truths to light.

Convincing others of the innocence of a wrongfully convicted individual is no easy task. But within the complexities and uncertainties, there is hope. My case is just one thread in a tapestry of similar stories where the pursuit of justice demands that we acknowledge, address, and correct the system's errors. As we navigate this journey, let us hold steadfast to the belief that our cherished legal system must remain open to self-correction when it veers off course.

In our collective pursuit of truth and justice, we find the strength to illuminate the concealed and rectify the unjust. My commitment to unveil the truth and correct the injustice imposed on me by the state of Nebraska stands as a testament to 'Nebraska Injustice,' a stark reminder that even in the face of adversity, the fight for justice endures.

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