One hundred and sixty-six arrests. Seven felony convictions. Forty-eight misdemeanor convictions. A criminal record stretching back to 1999. And now, finally, a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
Joshua Cory Nealy, a 41-year-old man from Salem, Oregon, was sentenced to life in prison on May 7, 2026, by Washington County Circuit Court Judge Theodore Sims. The conviction that triggered the sentence? Public indecency. He exposed himself to a female employee at a clothing store inside Washington Square Mall in Tigard, Oregon. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree theft for stealing a pair of sunglasses during the same incident.
The Washington County District Attorney’s Office announced the sentencing publicly on May 15. And the reaction from people following the case has been a mix of relief and disbelief. Relief that a man with this kind of record is finally off the streets for good. Disbelief that it took this long.
What Happened at Washington Square Mall
The incident that sealed Nealy’s fate happened in January 2023. He was on parole at the time, which is an important detail. He walked into a clothing store at Washington Square Mall, grabbed a pair of sunglasses, concealed them, then picked out some clothing and asked a female employee to show him to a dressing room.
Once inside, Nealy removed his clothes. Then he cracked the door open and asked the employee for help. When she agreed and approached, he opened the door fully and exposed himself to her. He asked if she wanted to have sex and invited her into the dressing room.
A store security officer responded to the situation and told Nealy to leave. Nealy then exposed himself to the security officer as well before getting dressed and walking out of the store, still carrying the stolen sunglasses. Tigard police arrived and arrested him shortly after.
It sounds like a bizarre, almost absurd story. But for the woman who was working a regular shift at a retail store that day, it was something else entirely. Imagine being asked a routine question by a customer and then having that happen.
166 Arrests Since 1999
Let’s put that number in perspective. Nealy’s first arrest came in 1999. Between then and now, he has been arrested 166 times. That works out to roughly six arrests per year, on average, for over 25 years. Some years were clearly worse than others, but the sheer volume is staggering. According to prosecutors, his convictions range from third-degree sexual abuse and robbery to numerous assaults.
He has seven felony convictions on his record, including attempted first-degree rape and third-degree sexual abuse. On top of that, he racked up 48 misdemeanor convictions. He also pleaded guilty in 2010 to failure to report as a sex offender, which is exactly what it sounds like. He was required to register his whereabouts and simply didn’t.
The question a lot of people are asking is obvious: how does someone get arrested 166 times before they’re locked up for good? The short answer is that not every arrest results in a felony conviction. Misdemeanor charges often carry shorter sentences. The system processes people in and out. Parole and probation cycles repeat. And until the legal threshold for a life sentence is triggered, there’s a ceiling on how long someone can be held.
The Oregon Law That Made This Possible
Nealy’s life sentence wasn’t handed down on a whim. It came through ORS 137.719, an Oregon statute that creates what’s called a “true-life sentence” for repeat sex offenders. The law was passed by the Oregon legislature in 2001 and works like a three-strikes rule specifically for felony sex crimes.
Here’s how it works: if a defendant has been sentenced for felony sex crimes at least two times previously, the presumptive sentence for a third felony sex crime conviction is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The judge can depart from this sentence, but only if there are “substantial and compelling reasons” to do so, based on guidelines from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission.
Nealy hit all three strikes. He was convicted of attempted rape in 2007. He was convicted of public indecency (a felony) in 2018. The 2023 mall incident gave him his third felony sex crime conviction. Under the law, life without parole was the default outcome.
The Oregon Supreme Court previously upheld the constitutionality of this law in a 2007 case called State v. Wheeler, ruling that life sentences for repeat sex offenders don’t violate the Oregon Constitution’s requirement that punishment be proportional to the offense.
The Defense’s Argument
Nealy’s defense attorneys did not go quietly. Before sentencing, they argued that life in prison was “inappropriate” for this case and that Nealy had a “compromised mental state.” Their arguments pulled from incidents across his criminal history to paint a picture of a man dealing with serious substance abuse and possible mental illness.
According to court documents, police reports from Nealy’s 2007 attempted rape conviction showed he had been using “crank” (methamphetamine), had been awake for two days straight, and expressed his belief that his mother was the Queen of Southern England. During the 2018 public indecency incident, his defense team said he was “talking gibberish the whole time.” And during the 2023 mall incident, the defense’s sentencing memo claimed Nealy “appeared under the influence.”
These are real issues. Substance abuse and mental illness are tangled up in a huge portion of repeat criminal behavior in the United States. The defense was essentially asking the judge to look at the person behind the record and consider whether locking him up forever was the right call.
Judge Theodore Sims didn’t budge. The true-life sentence stood.
Still More Cases Pending
Even with a life sentence now on the books, Nealy’s legal troubles aren’t entirely wrapped up. Court records show that Washington County has two separate open cases against him. One involves an assault charge, and the other involves an attempted assault charge. Both appear to have been filed after the January 2023 mall incident. Given that he’s already been sentenced to life without parole, it’s unclear what additional impact these cases will have on his overall situation, but they’re still working their way through the system.
Nealy is being transferred to the Oregon Department of Corrections to serve his sentence.
Why This Case Stands Out
Stories about repeat offenders aren’t rare. The United States has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world. Many states started passing “three strikes” laws in the 1990s to deal with exactly this kind of offender, someone who cycles through the system over and over again. Some of those laws have been scaled back over the years. Oregon’s, at least for sex offenses, has not.
But 166 arrests is extraordinary by any standard. Most career criminals don’t come close to that number. And the detail that Nealy was on parole when he walked into that mall in 2023 adds another layer. He wasn’t flying under the radar. The system was technically watching him. He did it anyway.
There’s a conversation to be had about whether a system that allows someone to be arrested 165 times before the 166th one sticks for good is working the way it should. That’s not a simple question, and reasonable people disagree. Some will point to Nealy’s apparent substance abuse and mental health issues and argue the system failed him long before it finally locked him up. Others will point to the victims, the store employee who was just doing her job that day in January 2023, and the many people harmed across his decades-long criminal career, and say the system failed them by not acting sooner.
Oregon’s Approach to Repeat Sex Offenders
Oregon has actually gotten stricter over the years when it comes to sentencing repeat sex offenders. The 2001 law that applied to Nealy’s case established the three-strikes framework. Then in 2017, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 1050, which created a two-strikes rule for the most serious sex offenses, including first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, and first-degree unlawful sexual penetration. That bill passed the Oregon Senate 30-0 and the House 58-0. It wasn’t even close.
Under the two-strikes law, a person convicted of one of those serious offenses who already has a prior conviction for a comparable crime faces a presumptive life sentence. Judges still have the ability to impose lighter sentences if they find “substantial and compelling reasons,” but the default is life.
The bipartisan support for that 2017 bill tells you something about where Oregon’s legislature stands on this issue. Whatever other political disagreements exist in Salem, repeat sex offenders getting locked up for a very long time is something basically everyone agrees on.
The DA’s Office Weighs In
The Washington County District Attorney’s Office didn’t just announce the sentencing. They commended the Tigard Police Department for its work on the case. They also acknowledged the store employees and security staff who dealt with Nealy during the incident and cooperated throughout the investigation and court proceedings.
That acknowledgment matters. Retail workers deal with a lot. They deal with rude customers, shoplifters, and people who treat them like they’re invisible. What the employee at Washington Square Mall experienced that day was something far worse. The fact that she and the security officer cooperated with the investigation and saw the case through to its conclusion is the reason Nealy is heading to prison for the rest of his life.
Joshua Cory Nealy has been cycling through Oregon’s criminal justice system for more than 25 years. That cycle is now over. He will spend the rest of his life in the Oregon Department of Corrections, and there is no parole hearing waiting for him down the road. For a man who has been arrested an average of once every two months for a quarter century, the system finally found a way to make it stop.