The Pennsylvania Superior Court reinstated charges against a Lackawanna County man accused of failing to comply with the state’s sex-offender requirements stemming from a conviction in Luzerne County more than three decades ago.
In May 2025, Wesley Morgan Pollard, of Scranton, was charged with three counts of failure to register as a sex-offender with the Pennsylvania State Police the previous month.
The registration requirement stemmed from 1990 rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse convictions in Luzerne County.
In that case, he was convicted of sexually abusing three Wilkes-Barre residents, one of whom was a minor. During a preliminary hearing in the case, all three testified that they were very fearful during a July 1990 attack and that Pollard had caused them pain, according to newspaper archives.
Pollard, now 65, argued the failure-to-register charges should be dismissed because the state did not pass their first version of Megan’s Law until 1995, which created a sex offender registry, after his 1990 conviction. He argued that retroactive application of the law was “punitive and unlawful.”
Lackawanna County Judge Andrew Jarbola agreed and dismissed the charges in September 2025, agreeing that because his conviction occurred in 1990, applying Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act retroactively was punitive and unlawful based legal precedent.
Another version of law was passed in 2012 following a federal ruling entitled SORNA II, which has since been revised and dictates how police track offenders based on the severity of their crime.
The Commonwealth appealed the ruling and the Superior Court agreed, ruling that Pollard was required to register under SORNA II, because he had previously registered under Megan’s Law when he was released from prison in 2003, and his registration period had not expired.
” . . we are constrained to reverse the order of the trial court and reinstate the three charges of failure to comply,” the Superior Court concluded.
The case is sent back to the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas for further criminal proceedings, where the Commonwealth is at liberty to prosecute the reinstated charges.
“My office is pleased with the Pennsylvania Superior Court’s well-reasoned decision reversing the trial court. This ruling clarifies an important area of law and closes a loophole that was being used to improperly remove convicted sex offenders from Megan’s Law registration,” Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher said. “This ruling will have statewide implications and will help ensure the continued safety of all Pennsylvanians from these sex offenders.”