A Plymouth man was sentenced this week in Marshall County Superior Court No. 1 on a charge of failure to register as a sex offender as a Level 5 Felony.
Robert Sumpter, 32, pleaded guilty to the charge in a plea agreement negotiated between the Marshall County Prosecutor’s Office and the defendant.
According to court documents, the incident began in February 2019 with a tip from the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force to the Bremen Police Department. They said that Sumpter was engaging in communication with a 13-year-old girl through Facebook. An investigation that was done in part by detectives with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department reportedly found that Sumpter had several Facebook accounts and was located in a place that wasn’t registered with the Sheriff’s Department, both violations as a condition of previous convictions of sexual misconduct with a minor, sexual battery and failure to register as a sex offender.
Sumpter admitted to Judge Robert O. Bowen that he knew of the requirements of updating registry information as well as full disclosure of the use of social media, according to the Marshall County Prosecutor’s Office.
Judge Bowen accepted the plea agreement that called for the maximum sentence for a Level 5 Felony. Sumpter will serve six years in the Indiana Department of Correction with no part of the sentence suspended. The judge also included an order for sex offender treatment followed by sex offender terms upon release and reintegration into society. A lower level felony charge of failure of a sex offender to possess identification was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
