By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Cushing man was given a five-year prison term last week for failing to comply with requirements of the Oklahoma Sex Offender Registration Act, a felony to which he pleaded guilty.
Thomas Lee Mays, 33, was sentenced on May 5 in accordance with a plea bargain approved by Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler, court records show.
Cushing Police Officer Alex Gegen had been notified on Feb. 5, 2019, by records keeper Susan Dooley that she had received information Mays had been staying at a Cushing house, an affidavit said.
“Dooley informed me that Mays was a sex offender and had not registered in Cushing as a sex offender. Dooley stated he was registered in Agra, Lincoln County,” the Cushing officer wrote in his affidavit.
When two Cushing officers went to a house on Greenlee Street to ask if Mays was living there, the homeowner replied, “Yes, for about two months,” the affidavit said.
After Mays came outside, “I asked Mays how long he has been at the residence,” the Cushing officer wrote in his affidavit.
“Mays stated that he did not live there, but he was there during the day,” to take care of a relative, the affidavit said.
“He stated that he lived in Agra, but would walk to the residence to take care (of his relative) and then would go back to Agra at night,” the affidavit said.
Another man “stated that Mays and he had come over to the house at the same time and they were staying in the residence together with about six other people,” the affidavit said.
When Mays was asked again how long he had been there, “Mays stated he had been at the house for at least a month,” the affidavit said.
According to Lincoln County court records, Mays was charged last June with providing false registration information, a felony to which he pleaded guilty two months ago when he was given a five-year suspended sentence.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections records show that Mays had previously been convicted of:
* indecent exposure in Payne County in 2011, for which he was given three years of prison and served about seven months’ incarceration that was to be followed by seven years of probation, but the balance of that was revoked in 2015 when he was given two more years in custody;
* drug possession in Payne County in 2009, for which he was sentenced in 2011 to two years and 11 months and served about seven months;
* failure to register as a sex offender in Lincoln County in 2013, for which he was given in 2015 a consecutive five-year prison term and served one year and five months between April of 2017 and September of 2018 when he was released;
* unauthorized use of a vehicle in Creek County in 2005, for which he was given in 2007 a two-year prison term and served about half of it.
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