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	Court Finds Right to Jury Trial If Sex Offender Registry at Stake Associated Press, carried in Azcentral February 14, 2008 http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0214sex-jury0214-ON.html The Arizona Supreme Court says misdemeanor defendants are entitled to jury trials if they could be required to register as sex offenders if convicted. The court's ruling Thursday comes in the case of Dale Fushek. The indicted Roman Catholic priest awaits trial on charges that include contributing to the delinquency of minors while he was a parish priest in Mesa in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of the misdemeanor charges against Fushek don't carry jail time long enough to trigger the constitutional right to a jury trial, but prosecutors asked that Fushek be found to have acted with sexual motivation. Such a finding would impose a lifetime requirement to register as a sex offender, and the Supreme Court says that makes the charges serious enough to give Fushek the right to a jury trial.
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