An admitted child sexual predator who molested a prepubescent girl in the 1980s and later wrote journal entries in prison detailing how to kidnap, rape and murder children has been convicted a second time of failing to register as a sex offender.
Tommy Mouton, 62, a former Bridge City resident, faces five years to 20 years in prison. The Jefferson Parish jury that was seated on Tuesday deliberated approximately 15 minutes in the evening before finding Mouton guilty as charged. Judge Donnie Rowan of the 24th Judicial District Court is scheduled to hand down the punishment on June 20.
Mouton failed to alert the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office or any other law enforcement agency of his residency after he was released from prison last year for his first conviction of failing to register as a sex offender.
Mouton finished that five-year sentence on Feb. 12, 2015, and informed the state Department of Corrections that he planned reside in the 200 block of 8th Street in Bridge City. A warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to register again.
Fifteen days after he was released from prison, police found Mouton in New Orleans, with unused condoms and a bottle of lubricant in his pockets, authorities have said. As a result of his absconding, prosecutors succeeded last year in persuading a 24th Judicial District Court commissioner to order that Mouton be held in jail without bond until his trial.
Mouton pleaded guilty in state court in Jefferson Parish in 1990 to sexual battery, aggravated oral sexual battery and indecent behavior with a juvenile. He admitted he molested a girl over a 21-month period beginning in 1986, when she was six years old.
While serving his 10-year sentence for that crime, corrections officers found in his cell his journal with entries detailing child abuse and drawings of young girls being sexually tortured. Those images led to his conviction in Claiborne Parish to possession of child pornography.
He was released from prison in 2008, but he later failed to register as a sex offender. A Jefferson Parish jury convicted him of that crime in 2010, and Judge Rowan, who presided over that case, too, sentenced him to five years in prison.
Before his release, he was evaluated by a state Sex Offender Assessment Panel, or SOAP, which seeks to determine whether certain inmates pose danger to society.
Mouton shortcut the process by admitting he is a child sexual predator. As such, he was ordered to wear a GPS monitor and register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He was required by law to register as a sex offender within three business days after his release from prison.
He failed to do so, and 15 days after he walked out of prison, members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force found him on a sidewalk near the 1800 block of Gravier Street in New Orleans, according to testimony.
Mouton, a U.S. Army veteran, was in downtown New Orleans because of an appointment with nearby the U.S. Veterans Administration hospital, according to testimony. He asserted that when released from Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, La., he rode a bus to New Orleans, where he was homeless and had little money.
Assistant District Attorneys Matt Clauss and Andrew DeCoste prosecuted the case.