It seemed like an open and shut case.

A Corry man back in 2019 had been charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old child.

He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to state prison and required to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life.

But just last week, after the man had been in prison for a year, Judge Gregory Hammond vacated the sentence.

While the man was an adult when he was charged with the crimes — 16 days after his 18th birthday — he was a minor when the conduct occurred.

So he should have been charged as a juvenile, and his case is heading back to the juvenile system.

The Times Observer has declined to name the defendant due to his current status as a juvenile. It took two years for someone in the court system to make that realization.

“Somehow, this case, it was incorrectly filed,” District Attorney Rob Greene said. “Technically, it should have been filed as a juvenile. The act occurred when he was 16.”

Where the breakdown occurred isn’t clear.

Greene said the arresting officer “should have filed it as a juvenile offense,” that his office or the man’s counsel, initially the Public Defender’s office, “should have charged that.”

Other entities that would have been in a position to uncover the error include the court itself as well as the adult probation department, who conducts pre-sentence investigation reports for the court.

“It pled out,” Greene said of the case. “No one figured it out until just a couple days ago.”

“I believe the Court prompted this and was going to enter an order,” the man’s current counsel, Elizabeth Feronti, said. “Instead of having the Court just enter the Order, Rob (Greene) prepared a lengthy motion requesting what the Court was already prepared to do. I believe Rob probably wanted credit for making it right even though I think the Court was going to do it no matter what.”

Greene said he immediately took action to correct the mistake.

“We’re bringing it back to juvenile court and moving forward from there,” he said.

Greene said he has filed a motion to certify the man as an adult.

Feronti credits the man’s own involvement in his case for uncovering the issue by filing for relief under the Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA).

“What I think the most important thing to note is if the individual didn’t file the PCRA last year, this would have never been caught,” Feronti said. “I can’t even take credit for that part of it. He’s the one that filed the initial PCRA Petition. He didn’t raise the issue of being a juvenile at the time of the offense.”

She said she discovered his age at the time of the offense when she reviewed the affidavit of probable cause filed by City of Warren police “but if he wouldn’t have wanted someone else to look it over for other reasons, this would have never been discovered,” she stressed.

While Hammond vacated the sentence last week, the man remains behind bars at SCI Houtzdale in Clearfield County as of Monday, according to online court records and the Department of Corrections’ state prison inmate locator system.

“The most unfortunate thing about all this is that he has probably lost the ability to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system and will more and likely end up back in the adult system,” Feronti said. “The juvenile system can only be involved in a person’s life until they are 21.”

Online court records show that he will turn 21 in December 2022. “The Commonwealth then filed a motion requesting certification to adult court and a hearing will be held in April on the issue. It’s a mess,” Feronti said.