MARION COUNTY — A Marion County jury deliberated for less than 2 hours Thursday before finding a 31-year-old Centralia man to be a sexually dangerous person.

Johnny Gibson can now be committed to the Illinois Department of Human Services for an indefinite period of time until he is no longer considered a danger to society.

Gibson was convicted in 2008 of Class X predatory criminal sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 10 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on that case and was due to be paroled last July.

But before Gibson could be released from prison, prosecutors wanted him declared sexually dangerous

The Illinois Attorney General’s Office sought to show during the trial that Gibson suffers from pedophilia, noting that in addition to the 2008 conviction, Gibson had earlier admitted to other sex acts and that as a juvenile he was adjudicated in 2002 for molesting a family member.

Prosecutors argued that Gibson meets all the conditions for being declared sexually dangerous and if not found sexually violent and released without further treatment, he would commit another act.

It was noted in court that Gibson was seven times more likely than the nearly 1,500 other people released last year from IDOC for sex crimes to reoffend.