Miami Judge to Return ‘Gift’ to Santa Monica

MIAMI — A sex offender who was “dumped” here by Santa Monica police was ordered returned to Southern California on Thursday.

Dade County Circuit Judge Calvin Mapp ordered convicted sex offender Weston J. Hill returned to Santa Monica, where Police Chief James Keane admitted that he bought Hill a one-way ticket to Miami in retaliation for a Florida judge’s shipping a prostitute to Los Angeles.

“We’re sending him back whether he’s competent or not,” Mapp said Thursday, adding that Hill had agreed to go voluntarily. The judge said Hill will be returned to California within 10 days.

“That’s the best news I’ve had all day,” Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre said.

A Santa Monica police spokesman said Keane had gone home for the day and would have no comment until today.

The prostitute-for-a-sex-offender swap made national headlines and launched a transcontinental war of words that included the Miami City Commission’s authorization of a lawsuit against Santa Monica.

Hill, a diagnosed schizophrenic and habitual sex offender, got in trouble shortly after landing in Miami on March 19. First, he was arrested on a charge of exposing himself in public. Several weeks later, he was arrested and sent to a mental hospital on a charge of stoning a church.

Keane said California “owed Florida one” because a Fort Lauderdale judge in 1982 gave Melanie King, who had been arrested 47 times for prostitution, the choice between prison or a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. King wound up in a Santa Monica courtroom last year on charges of lewd conduct and prostitution.