The state Superior Court has upheld a McKean County Court ruling labeling Bradford man Aaron Nazario a sexually violent predator.
In June 2016, Nazario, 32, had pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent assault of a person less than 13 for the sexual abuse of a girl between October 2012 and May 2014, when she was 7 to 9 years of age.
In December 2016, a hearing was held to determine if Nazario fit the description of a sexually violent predator — “a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense … and who (has) a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in predatory sexually violent offenses,” according to a definition by the state Superior Court.
At that hearing, Judge William Morgan ruled Nazario was a sexually violent predator and would be required to register with the state police for the remainder of his life, according to court records.
Nazario, through his attorney, public defender Phil Clabaugh, filed an appeal. The appeal alleged that Sexual Offender Assessment Board expert Brenda Manno used information to which Nazario had not pleaded guilty in formulating her opinion of him as a predator.
The Superior Court opinion, penned by President Judge Emeritus Correale Stevens, stated, “Appellant does not dispute that his guilty plea to a charge of indecent assault constitutes a conviction of a sexually violent offense.” Instead, he quoted from Nazario’s appeal, which stated the argument was focused on the assertion that the Assessment Board’s investigation and assessment were “based solely on the unproven allegations contained in the initial police filings and reports, rather than in review of actual facts of record proven at trial or in a guilty plea transcript.”
Stevens indicated that neither Nazario nor his attorney Clabaugh raised objections to the Sexual Offender Assessment Board’s reports during the hearing held in McKean County Court in December. Because no objection was raised before the trial court, the “appellant cannot now complain that the court erred in admitting the evidence,” Stevens wrote.
However, he added, there was a “blanket objection” lodged against Manno’s report.
Stevens stated in the opinion that Manno’s opinion constituted evidence itself, and said the law does not limit the Assessment Board to considering only what is pleaded to.
Clabaugh had also raised the fact that a previous offender assessment, done for a sexual assault case filed in 2015, was also done by Manno — and found that Nazario was not a sexually violent predator.
In response to the appeal, Judge Morgan had stated that just because the first assessment had that finding did not preclude a second one from drawing a different conclusion. “Obviously she had additional information in 2016,” Morgan had written, “including the history of the previous non-SVP offense which she reviewed prior to making appellant’s current evaluation.”
The three-judge panel for the Superior Court — Stevens, Judge Judith Ference Olson and Judge Alice Beck Dubow — agreed, determining the prosecution had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that Nazario met the criteria to be a sexually violent predator.
The Superior Court’s judgment was entered on Monday.
