Sentencing delayed for sex-offender

COEUR d’ALENE — Sentencing for a 65-year-old Hayden man who solicited an undercover police officer for sex was delayed Tuesday because a court-ordered psychosexual evaluation hadn’t been completed.

A bent-over and fidgeting Ronald Nold, who appeared in court shackled and wearing orange jail pajamas, will not be sentenced for probably at least a month, said First District Judge John Mitchell.

Mitchell delayed sentencing for Nold after learning from Nold’s attorney Tuesday that because the psychosexual evaluation had not been completed, presentence investigators had no sentence recommendation.

“I have never seen a presentence investigator not make a recommendation,” defense attorney Scot Nass said.

Nold pleaded guilty in April to one count of using the internet to solicit sex from a minor. As part of the plea agreement, Nold would spend at least five years behind bars, but prosecutors could argue for a longer sentence.

Because Nold is a registered sex-offender who was compliant, according to court records, for 22 years before the latest conviction, Nass said a psychosexual evaluation would be imperative to his defense.

Anything more than five years behind bars for his client, Nass said, “would likely be a death sentence.”

Nass asked to continue the hearing despite an objection from prosecutors.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Nass said.

Nold, who served time for a sodomy conviction in Oregon in the 1990s, was part of a police sting last summer in which an officer posing as a teenage boy agreed to meet Nold for sex at a Coeur d’Alene hotel. Nold had contacted the officer through Craigslist and was arrested at the hotel.

Nold has been in the Kootenai County jail since the court revoked a $150,000 bond after the 65-year-old failed at a suicide attempt on the eve of a hearing in March, which left him stooped, fragile-looking and barely able to walk.

“It is with great reluctance that I grant the motion to continue,” Mitchell said. He ordered Nold be kept in Kootenai County — and not be transported to another jail to ease crowding — to ensure a psychosexual evaluation is completed.