Man from Lansing Township has been sentenced to a year in jail and five years of probation for seven felony and two misdemeanor convictions. Reed McGrath exposed himself to several women in April 2019 while wearing women's underwear and solicited a minor for sex in Grand Ledge.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent exposure by a sexually delinquent person, two counts of disorderly/obscene conduct and one count each of accosting a child for immoral purposes, fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and gross indecency.

Prosecutor Lloyd believes that the Defendant’s conduct wholly supported an extended prison sentence within the sentencing guidelines, but the Court handed down a sentence that allows the Defendant back into the community, the very same community that he victimized over the course of two weeks last spring, Eaton County Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Chris Anderson wrote in an email.

Richard Williams, McGrath's attorney, said McGrath has a mindset of a 12- or 13-year-old and is stunted when it comes to interacting with people and adults in the real world. He's been diagnosed with depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder and Aspergers and a psychologist called him a socially immature young adult.

McGrath faced related charges in 2013 and was sentenced under the Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, which makes a case nonpublic to give young offenders a second chance. He saw a psychologist every week during his probation period, kept seeing them for about another year, then decided he was cured and stopped going, Williams said.

There is no precedent for a case like this, Williams said. McGrath saw half a dozen psychologists and all determined his behavior was due to his autism. For the five years of probation, McGrath will be on an electronic tether and confined to his home without access to electronics, Williams said. He's been assigned to the strictest probation agent in Eaton County, and if he violates probation once, he's facing 82 months in prison, he said. He also is required to see a psychologist on a regular basis.

The Eaton County Prosecutor's Office did not offer McGrath a plea deal, Anderson said. He pleaded to all charges. McGrath's sentencing guidelines called for a minimum prison sentence of between nearly seven and 11 years. Anderson said prosecutors told Eaton County Judge John Maurer that a sentence below the guidelines was inappropriate

But this is a situation where justice is not one-size-fits-all, Williams said. The psychologists showed McGrath was not one of these animal predators running around, Williams said. It's a different situation, so a different punishment had to be fashioned. If McGrath were to be sentenced to prison, it would amount to a death sentence.