On March 30, 2016, police in Duluth, Minnesota, arrested 44-year-old Ronald Fairbanks, charging him with failure to register as a predatory offender.
Fairbanks had been released from the St. Louis County Jail on January 19, 2016, awaiting the resolution of a shoplifting charge. He was homeless and had two previous convictions, in 2002 and 2006, for registration violations, which were based on a 1994 conviction for fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The arrest warrant said that Fairbanks had received paperwork and information about his registration requirements upon his release from the jail. Because Fairbanks did not have a permanent address, he was required to check in weekly with the police department, and the warrant said that as of March 9, he had not registered a single time.
On April 5, 2016, a judge in St. Louis County District Court ordered Fairbanks to undergo a psychological examination, known as a Rule 20 report, to assess his mental state and competency to stand trial. The psychologist said in their report that Fairbanks was “both mentally ill and mentally deficient to some degree.” The psychologist also said that Fairbanks was competent to stand trial but that Fairbanks “would require repetition for information expected to be used in short-term memory or at the moment in the courtroom for purposes of comprehension.”
At a hearing before Judge Sally Tarnowski on June 22, 2016, Fairbanks said he wanted to plead guilty. His attorney asked him if he was thinking clearly, and Fairbanks said, “This is the first time we discussed this case, so, it’s—it is what it is. I’m guilty.”
Later, he said, “I wouldn’t be lying to you if I said I don’t remember, and I’m guilty of the crime, but I don’t remember that I was supposed to follow through with that. And I’m worried that when I go to prison, when I get out, I’m still not going to remember … It scares me a lot, your honor, and it bothers me to think like this. But I don’t remember the actual crime.”
The prosecutor asked Fairbanks a series of questions, and Fairbanks answered yes to whether he was required to register, whether he had trouble remembering to register, and whether he had past convictions for failing to register.
The prosecutor also asked Fairbanks if he knew that a homeless person had specific registration requirements. Fairbanks answered, “That’s what I didn’t remember … And that’s what I’m here for today because I didn’t follow through with that.”
After Fairbanks said that he agreed with the prosecutor that the state’s evidence could show he was guilty, the prosecutor told Judge Tarnowski that Fairbanks was entering “sort of a, I guess, Alford hybrid.” (Under an Alford plea, defendants do not admit guilt but acknowledge that the state has sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction.) “I’m fairly satisfied that he’s acknowledged that he was supposed to register and didn’t.”
Judge Tarnowski accepted Fairbanks’s plea and later sentenced him to 36 months in prison.
On November 7, 2016, Fairbanks moved to withdraw his plea, arguing that it was invalid because the state never established that he knowingly violated the registration requirement for a predatory offender.
On May 8, 2017, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the conviction. It agreed with Fairbanks’s appellate attorneys that Fairbanks never said at the plea hearing that he knew he had to register each week. “His claims of lack of knowledge or memory are corroborated by the Rule 20 report that found he has serious short-term memory loss and would need repetition to remember things,” the court said. “Because the record fails to establish that appellant knew he had to check in on a weekly basis and that he knowingly failed to do so, his guilty plea lacks a factual basis and is not accurate.”
Fairbanks was released from custody on June 9, 2017. The state dismissed the charge on January 11, 2018.
On the same day, Fairbanks pled guilty to a separate charge of failure to register, which involved two separate events in August and September 2017. Judge Tarnowski sentenced him to three years in prison but stayed the sentence and placed Fairbanks on supervised probation. After Fairbanks was found to have violated the terms of his probation, Judge Tarnowski activated the prison sentence.
On June 27, 2019, Fairbanks filed a petition in St. Louis County District Court, seeking to be declared eligible for state compensation for his 2016 conviction. His petition was denied on January 27, 2020, on procedural grounds. Fairbanks refiled the petition on March 31, 2020.
Fairbanks testified at an evidentiary hearing before Judge Tarnowski on July 16, 2020. He said he had first been institutionalized when he was 10 years old and suffered a traumatic brain injury around 2013. Fairbanks said that injury left him with substantial cognitive and memory problems, leaving him unable to remember to do even the most basic activities of daily life. He said that when not in custody, the only way for him to remain compliant with his registration requirement would be to live in a residential treatment facility where a caseworker could remind him and then assist him with the registration.
Tarnowski also reviewed Fairbanks’s mental-health records, which supported his testimony about his impaired cognitive abilities and diminished memory.
On December 11, 2020, Judge Tarnowski granted Fairbanks’s petition and said that he was eligible for compensation. She said he was “factually innocent of violating [the registration statute] and is ‘exonerated on grounds consistent with innocence.’ He did not knowingly violate the homeless registration provisions of the statute.”
In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature approved payment of $56,508 to Fairbanks, including $18,500 in attorney fees.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 07-29-2026
