Sex offender acquitted in kidnapping and rape case sentenced to 8 years on other charges

A sex offender acquitted last year of kidnapping and rape charges was found guilty Tuesday of unrelated charges of failing to properly register. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Jason Nicholas Minton, 46, of Orange City, was found guilty of two counts of failure of a sex offender to properly register; each is a third-degree felony punishable by up five years in prison. He was found not guilty of a third count of failure of a sex offender to properly register.

Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano sentenced Minton to the eight years in prison followed by two years of community control.

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The jury of four women and two men deliberated for about an hour and a half before returning the verdict.

Minton has been a registered sex offender since his conviction in 2006 of lewd assault and sexual battery of a victim under 16, according to the Florida Department of Corrections records.

Minton drew a great deal of media coverage after a security video showed him on Feb. 18, 2020, dragging an apparently unconscious woman from the River Grille at 950 U.S. 1 in Ormond Beach and into his pickup truck.

Minton was charged with kidnapping to facilitate the commission of a felony, which was punishable by up to life in prison. He was also charged with sexual battery on a helpless person, which was punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

A jury found Minton not guilty of those charges on Aug. 26, 2022, and he was released from jail.

But following the acquittal, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a Facebook post that Minton would have to strictly comply with the law to avoid a trip back to jail.

The sheriff's office arrested Minton soon after and prosecutors charged him with the three counts of failure of a sex offender to properly register during a time period between October 2019 and February 2020.

Assistant State Attorney Ashley Terwilleger, who prosecuted both cases, told jurors Tuesday during the one-day trial that, as a sex offender, Minton was required to provide the sheriff’s office with a variety of information, including his address, employment information, cell number and email addresses.

Minton listed one phone number, a work number for Tucker’s Tree Service. In the email and internet identifier section of the registration, Minton listed an email for his employer, Tucker’s Tree Service, as well as a Facebook page and a Snapchat account.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for Minton’s cellphone and found that the phone number Minton registered did not match, Terwilleger said.

Detectives also found two email addresses, one for a Gmail account and one for a Yahoo account, that Minton failed to register, Terwilleger said.

Aaron Delgado, Minton’s defense attorney in both cases, told jurors that Minton had a lot of requirements as a sex offender.

“Being a sex offender is a tough life, pretty much a life sentence,” Delgado said, “because what you are going to hear is, if you’re a convicted sex offender, for pretty much the rest of your life you have to register these things every year, twice a year.”

Delgado said that Minton received bad information from the sheriff's office on what he was supposed to register. He said that when Minton went to register, he was told just to register the main phone number.

“At the end of the day, we are going to submit to you that they made a mistake and misinformed Mr. Minton of what his obligations were,” Delgado said.

Delgado said that the owner of Tucker’s Tree Service had wanted to take a less active role and forwarded all of the business’ phone calls to Minton’s cellphone.

“All the calls are set up somehow to go to that number, so he’s basically a walking talking switchboard," Delgado said of Minton. "Any call that comes in goes to that number."

Delgado said Minton's father, Nick Minton, created the Yahoo account.

Minton did not take the stand during this week's trial or the trial in which he was acquitted.

In an interview after the verdict, Delgado said he respected the jury’s decision. He also said he expected to appeal.

He said he was disappointed that Minton would not get credit for the more than two years he spent in jail on the case on which he was acquitted. Court records indicate Minton spent 918 days in jail awaiting trial in that case. Delgado said he would only get credit for the five days he was jailed on the registration case.

Delgado said in the first trial, jurors were not told Minton was a sex offender, but in this one being a sex offender was an element of the charge. However jurors were not told the specifics of the crime that led to the sex offender designation.

In a press release Tuesday, 7th Circuit State Attorney R.J. Larizza stated "Our communities are safer tonight because a prolific sex offender is off the street. We will not waver in our commitment to protect you and your families."

Minton still faces another charge

Minton still faces a separate case involving another woman in which he is accused of third-degree felony battery.

Minton is accused of meeting a DeLand woman for a fake job interview on Feb. 14, 2020, at an Orange City bar. Then he drove her to a secluded area and pulled at her shirt and bra and touched her shoulders several times against her will, reports state.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Sex offender acquitted in earlier case, convicted in registration case