News : Urbana man faces federal sentence for sex offender registry violation

A convicted, registered sex offender who failed to register with authorities was sentenced today to over a year in federal prison.

David Alden Johnston, 24, from Urbana, received the prison term following his November 18, 2010 guilty plea to one count of failing to register as a sex offender.

At the guilty plea, Johnston admitted to failing to properly update his sex offender registration from June 7, 2010 through August 24, 2010. Johnston was required to register because he was convicted in Olmsted County, Minnesota, of three counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree.

Johnston was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. Johnston was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed. He must also serve a 10-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

Johnston is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger and was investigated by the United States Marshals Service, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, and the United States Postal Inspection Service. This case was investigated as part of Operation Northern Star. In Operation Northern Star, deputies from the United States Marshal’s Service and local law enforcement officers across the 52 counties in the Northern District of Iowa teamed up to verify the registered addresses of 1745 sex offenders living in those counties.

Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is CR 10-102.