State’s inaction leads to sex-case dismissal

ROCKLAND – A Knox County Superior Court justice has dismissed two unlawful sexual-contact charges against a Glen Cove man accused of committing the offenses more than a decade ago.

Oliver Williamson, 76, formerly of Rockland and the St. Johnsbury area of Vermont, was indicted in December 2003 for alleged sex offenses that took place Feb. 1, 1992, and Feb. 1, 1993, against a female under age 14.

He now lives in Glen Cove.

The victim made the initial allegation in 1995.

At that time, Maine State Police Sgt. Glenn Lang began an investigation, which Justice John Atwood said in his decision was delayed from 1995 to 1999 “due to the investigating officer’s having lost track of the case.”

Williamson’s attorney, Steven Peterson of Rockport, filed a motion seeking to have the charges dismissed based on the statute of limitations and because of unfair pre-indictment delay in pursuing the case.

During a recent hearing on the motion to dismiss, Williamson told the judge he has been getting disoriented in recent years and has no memory of where he was living at the time of the alleged offenses.

In the judge’s order, filed Monday in Superior Court, he states, “The court finds, under these unusual circumstances, that the prejudice is actual, i.e., that the defendant would in fact face extraordinary difficulties in defending himself from these charges either by his challenge to the State’s case or in presenting his own.

“So, in the end, the court finds that the defendant’s due process rights have been violated by the State’s unjustifiable inaction in this case and that to conclude otherwise would violate ‘fundamental conceptions of justice,'” Atwood wrote.