AGs office to appeal Walcott decision

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Attorney General Mike Cox's office will appeal the decision Judge David Buter made Thursday that dismissed the charges against the man accused of accosting a child for immoral purposes.

The decision came Thursday to dismiss Benjamin Walcott's case. Walcott was a youth football camp counselor accused of trying to get young boys to take off their shoes to satisfy his sexual needs.

In what appeared to be a rare move, Grand Rapids District Court Judge David Butersaid the case Attorney General Mike Cox's office brought did not fit the definitions of the crime and dismissed the case.

The Attorney General's office said it will appeal the decision to the Kent County Circuit Court.

The charges Walcott faces stem from July 2009. That was when Michigan State Police received a call from a Delaware detective. It's unclear how, but the detective discovered Walcott, a registered sex offender, was working as a counselor at an Allegan County youth football camp.

Walcott went by the alias Albright in order to avoid being discovered on the sex offender list.

The people who ran the camp checked a computer Walcott frequently used and found 75 to 100 pictures of him with bare feet pressed against his neck.

It wasn't the first time he had done this.

In 2001, Walcott admitted he got sexual gratification from kids crushing toys with their bare feet. But prosecutors decided there wasn't a crime.

In 2002, he was convicted of a lesser charge of fourth degree sexual assault for doing the same thing in Kent County.

The Michigan Attorney General's office decided to prosecute the case, charging Walcott with accosting a minor for immoral purpose, a four year felony.

Two teenagers who attended the Allegan camp testified Walcott used various excuses to video tape them crushing toys with their bare feet.

But neither victim testified Walcott touched them or himself while their feet were being recorded.

Prosecutors had to prove one of several elements to move the case to trial in Circuit Court; that it was an immoral act, involved sexual intercourse, gross indenency, depravity or delinquency.

The judge said the case didn't meet any of the criteria.

"There were any number of proper charges which could have been appropriately brought. They may have been less punitive in terms of penalty provisions than this one," Judge Buter said.

Walcott will be arraigned Monday in Ionia County on a charge of working in a school zone while on the sex offender list.