Gulfport, Miss. – A former Florida resident who moved to Mississippi, pleaded guilty to the federal felony offense of failure to register as a sex offender, announced U.S. Attorney Darren LaMarca and U.S. Marshal Mark Shepherd.
According to court documents, Jason Marvin Kent, 43, was arrested on July 22, 2021, by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department in Moss Point on a failure to register arrest warrant issued out of Walton County, Florida. An investigation by the U.S. Marshals Service and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office revealed that Kent relocated from Florida to Mississippi in early 2021 to avoid being arrested on the Florida warrant.
In 2002, Kent had been convicted in Walton County, Florida of lewd or lascivious conduct, sentenced to three years of probation, and was classified as a sex offender. Florida is a lifetime registration state and, in 2015, Kent was convicted of failure to register in Florida, for which he was sentenced to three years of probation. In addition to failing to update his registration in Florida before moving to Mississippi, official records showed that Kent had failed to register as a sex offender in the State of Mississippi.
Kent pleaded guilty to failure to register as a sex offender which is a federal felony under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), commonly known as the Adam Walsh Act. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 23, 2022, at 10:00 a.m., and he faces a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Walton County Florida Sheriff’s Department.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stan Harris is the prosecutor for the case.