Outrage after technicality frees convicted child molester sentenced to 300 years

Michael McFadden (Colorado Department of Corrections)

He got sentenced to 300 years in jail.

But Michael McFadden won’t serve a single day of it. The Colorado man won’t even have to register as a sex offender.

That is because an appeals court declared that McFadden’s rights were violated because he did not get a speedy trial.

The technicality that is allowing McFadden to walk with a clean slate has plenty of people fuming.

Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein expressed disgust over the appellate decision, adding that “we are without remedy.”

But he’s determined not to see a habitual criminal get off on a technicality. Rubinstein now is pushing to have state laws changed so that a danger to public safety such as McFadden cannot be set free so easily, according to the Daily Sentinel.

The trial for McFadden, who was convicted in 2015, was delayed because his lawyers wanted some provisions included in the questionnaire given to jurors. But the state appellate court found that the delay robbed McFadden of his constitutional right to a speedy trial. His convictions were vacated and he was set free.

Rubenstein wants voters to take note, telling them to make a difference in the next judicial elections by casting their ballots.

Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein is lobbying for a change in state law that could have kept a Grand Junction child molester in prison, while also urging voters to "take action" at the next appropriate judicial election.

Rubinstein made his comments in a Facebook post after McFadden was released this week.

He wrote he was "appalled that our justice system, in which a jury of the defendant's peers which the defendant helped choose, unanimously found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of sexually offending against six innocent victims, yet the court of appeals vacated the convictions after finding that the trial court's efforts to protect the defendant's constitutional rights to a fair trial violate an arbitrary statutory right that the defendant had waived on two prior occasions.”