A Durham man who successfully petitioned to get his name off North Carolina's sex offender registry in 2021 is back behind bars, this time accused of pushing a 14-year-old to record and send him a sexual video. John Benjamin Liles III, 56, is charged with first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor in connection with an incident dated May 19. He was arrested Thursday and remained jailed without bail as of Friday afternoon.
According to his arrest warrant, Liles is accused of encouraging the teenager to film and send him a sexual video, as reported by the Raleigh News & Observer. A magistrate judge ordered him held without bond, citing his “history of similar behavior” as the justification for keeping him in custody. His next court date is tentatively set for later this month.
A Registry Exit Five Years in the Making
Liles became a registered sex offender in North Carolina in 1999 after Florida convictions out of Walton County for possessing a video containing a nude child and possessing, with intent to distribute, a photo of a child, court records show, according to the News & Observer. He served just under two years in prison for that case. Years later, in May 2005, he was convicted of failing to update his address on his Florida sex offender registration, a violation that sent him back to prison; he spent a little over a year behind bars before his release in August 2006, per state records cited by the paper.
Florida's Department of Law Enforcement sex offender registry still lists Liles as a registered offender today, and the registry indicates he moved to Durham in June 2009. More than a decade later, in December 2020, Liles petitioned to be removed from North Carolina's registry. Now-retired Judge Orlando Hudson granted that request in August 2021, court records show.
How the Law Allows Offenders to Petition Off the List
North Carolina law allows offenders ordered to register for 30 years to petition for removal after a decade has passed without a similar conviction, the News & Observer reports. A state statute, G.S. 14-208.12A, sets the petition timing at ten years from the date of initial county registration, though that excerpt alone does not spell out every eligibility requirement for such a request or guarantee any particular outcome.
Liles's case now returns to the system that once let him exit the registry, with new charges that accuse him of exploiting another child years after his release.
