Truck driver sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting boys on road trips
A Grand Junction truck driver who was previously sentenced to 324 years in prison for sexually assaulting children, then released when that conviction was overturned on a technicality, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.
Michael McFadden was convicted in 2015 in Mesa County of molesting six children. Each of the children testified in that trial.
But in a decision supported by the Colorado Court of Appeals, McFadden's case was dismissed in February 2018. McFadden's lawyers argued that his statutory rights to a speedy trial had been violated. McFadden was released the same day the Colorado Supreme Court declined to re-consider the appellate court's decision.
The reversal was controversial.
"I disagree with the ruling by the court of appeals," 21st Judicial District Attorney Dan Rubenstein responded in a statement to CBS affiliate KKTV days later. Rubenstein pointed out how the McFadden's attorneys had asked for, and were granted, two delays during the case, and the judge also delayed McFadden's trial to ensure a proper jury pool.
"I am 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 6 innocent victims, yet the court of appeals vacated the convictions after finding that the trial courts 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."
After the county/state case fell apart, federal prosecutors picked up the pieces. McFadden was indicted by a federal grand jury 15 months after his release. He was arrested four days later in Colorado Springs.
According to case documents, all six of the children had been assaulted at McFadden's residence. But two of them were also assaulted while accompanying McFadden out of state during his work as a commercial truck driver.
Federal prosecutors used this to charge McFadden with five counts of crossing state lines with Intent to Engage in a Sexual Act with a Minor under the Age of 12, and Transportation of a Minor with Intent to Engage in Sexual Activity.
"There was never any business-related purpose for bringing children on truck trips," federal prosecutors stated in a case document.
Those two victims also testified in the federal. They were 8 and 10 years old at the time of the offenses in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
"Of course, no punishment will make the victims and their families whole or give them back what the defendant stole from them," United States Attorney Cole Finegan stated in a press release. "But a sentence that ensures the defendant will never be free in any community ever again will at least send the right message-that perpetrators of this kind of horrendous, unforgivable crime will die in prison."
McFadden had been convicted of molesting another child in 1990. McFadden was designated a sex offender at the end of that case.
McFadden has 14 days in which to appeal Thursday's federal sentencing.
DA Rubenstein helped introduced a bill in the state legislature in 2018 that would have addressed the court-approved postponements conflict with speedy trial rights of defendants. The bill, however, stalled in the House Judiciary Committee and ultimately failed.