46 year-old Clynn Partee, of Pascagoula, pled guilty yesterday to the federal crime of failure to register as a sex offender.
In 2006, Partee had been convicted in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, of predatory criminal sexual assault. This sexual offense was perpetrated against a 12-year old female victim, and he was sentenced to eight years with the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Partee was deemed a Tier III Sex Offender and has a lifetime registration requirement. After his conviction in Illinois, he acknowledged his continuing requirement to register as a sex offender. Around June 2015, he was released from Illinois state custody.
Later in 2015, Partee moved from Illinois to Mississippi. He did not register as required when he departed Illinois, and he did not register within the required time of his arrival in Mississippi. He was issued a Mississippi state identification card in September 2015, with an address in Richton, and ultimately relocated to Pascagoula.
In September 2018, Pascagoula Police responded to a disturbance call at a hotel in Pascagoula and encountered Partee. While he was not arrested during that encounter, a National Criminal Information Center database check was conducted regarding him. It was brought to the attention of a sex offense investigator with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, that Partee was a convicted sex offender, and that he had been listed as a non-compliant sex offender in Illinois. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office Investigator contacted the U.S. Marshals Service, which conducted further investigation.
The Marshals Service learned that Partee was not listed as a registered sex offender in the State of Mississippi, via the Mississippi Sex Offender Registry. The Marshals Service contacted the Mississippi Department of Public Safety concerning his current sex offender registration status. Mississippi authorities provided the Marshals Service with a letter certifying that Partee was not listed as a registered sex offender in Mississippi. The State of Mississippi also had not received a notification from the State of Illinois indicating the Defendant’s intent to relocate to Mississippi. It was conclusively determined that he had never registered as a sex offender in the State of Mississippi.
The Marshals Service investigation concluded that Partee’s current residence was at a Pascagoula hotel that also routinely houses a wide variety of people including children. He was arrested by local law enforcement officials as a non-compliant sex offender in September 2018. Subsequent to his federal indictment, Partee was arrested by the U.S. Marshal’s Service in October 2018.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 21st, in Gulfport, and faces a maximum penalty of ten years in prison in addition to a $250,000 fine and a minimum of five years to life of supervised release.
