Kevin Duane Barnard - Repeat Sex Offender - Facing Life Sentence

A previously convicted sex offender faces a life prison sentence after being found guilty Thursday of making a lewd or indecent proposal to a child.

Tulsa County jurors convicted Kevin Duane Barnard of a charge alleging that he proposed sexual conduct during 2007 e-mail communications with a person he thought was a 12-year-old girl but who was actually an undercover police officer.

Barnard, 33, was also found guilty of a separate felony count of using a computer to commit a felony.

Jurors gave Barnard a life sentence for the lewd proposal and a 10-year term for the computer crime.

Barnard did not testify.

During the sentencing stage of his trial in Associate District Judge Dana Kuehn’s court, Assistant District Attorney Christina Wolfram presented evidence that Barnard was previously convicted in a lewd molestation case in Washington County.

In that 1998 case, he pleaded no contest and got a seven-year suspended sentence, records show.

The Tulsa County case involved evidence that police received information that Barnard had handed a note to a fifth-grade girl in a Tulsa public library providing his name, phone number and e-mail address and a note indicating that she had a friend if she wanted one.

A detective — who portrayed a 12-year-old girl — sent correspondence to that e-mail address.

The defendant was told repeatedly that he was corresponding with a 12-year-old. He suggested meeting and going on a date and inquired about whether they could engage in specific
types of sexual activity, evidence indicated.

Barnard was charged and arrested in May 2007. The resolution of his case was delayed by repeated issues related to his mental competency.

Barnard remains in the Tulsa Jail to await his formal sentencing on July 20.

He also has an unresolved Tulsa County felony charge of failing to register as a sex offender, involving an allegation that he did not report in timely fashion a change of address to the appropriate authorities.

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte

"On average most sex offenders are never caught again for a new sex offense, after five years, between 10 and 15 percent of sex offenders are detected, often convicted, of committing a new sex offense. If you follow them for ten years the rates go up somewhat, if you follow them as long as we’ve been able to follow them, which is about 20 years, the rates go up to somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the total sample will eventually be caught for a new sex offense."

Dr. R. Karl Hansen