VA - ACLU: New sex offender bill 'invitation to throw stones'

Original Article

01/20/2015

By Chris Thomas

RICHMOND - A house subcommittee unanimously passed a bill which would require registered sex offenders to have public hearings before gaining access to Virginia schools.

The delegate behind the bill says its a step to protect children, but civil rights organizations say the bill goes too far.

"I certainly would like to know who is being granted access to these public school systems," said Delegate Jeff Campbell (R-6th) who is introducing the bill and is the parent of school-aged children. "I understand the concern about this, but it's really not an attack on the sex offender themselves."

HB1366 would require registered sex offenders to advertise their public hearing in the newspaper for two weeks. Anyone attending the hearing could testify against the request to gain access to the school. Some civil rights groups are already coming out against the bill saying it could lead to angry mobs.

"It's essentially an invitation to throw stones," said Claire Gastañaga with the ACLU of Virginia. "Having a public hearing before you can go to visit your child's teacher? Tell me, what's that supposed to accomplish? I don't see what it accomplishes, other than inviting an angry mob into the school."

Del. Campbell disagrees with that assessment.

"It is certainly not going to prohibit the offender from being able to petition the court and gain access," he said.

AZ - Arizona’s Naked Photo Law Makes Free Speech a Felony

Original Article

09/23/2014

By Lee Rowland

Which of the following could land you a felony conviction in Arizona?

• Showing images of naked prisoners tortured at Abu Ghraib;
• Linking to the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of “Napalm Girl,” showing an unclothed Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack;
• Sharing a close-up photo of a woman’s breast with a breastfeeding support group;
• Waving a friend over to see a cute naked baby pic — like the one you see on this page.

Unfortunately, the answer is all of the above. That’s because Arizona recently passed a law that makes it a felony — and potentially a sex offense — to share any image of nudity or sexuality before you get consent from every person pictured.

Protecting personal privacy is, without doubt, a laudable goal. Indeed, the ACLU works tirelessly to protect your private data. But Arizona’s “nude photo law” is a seriously misguided attempt to achieve that goal. This new crime is broad and confusing. It applies to anyone who shares a nude image, not just to bad actors who intentionally invade another’s privacy. A prosecutor need not demonstrate that a person had an expectation of privacy in an image before charging you with a crime for sharing it. And the law applies equally to a private person’s hacked naked photo and a beautiful nude at a photography exhibit — because the law’s breadth encompasses truly newsworthy, artistic, and historical images.

As a result, the nude photo law creates bizarre and troubling burdens on speech fully protected by the First Amendment.

Rest of the story

CA - Do Residency Bans Drive Sex Offenders Underground?

Original Article

07/07/2014

By Steven Yoder

Early last year, Los Angeles set aside a sliver of land in its Harbor Gateway neighborhood for the city’s newest and smallest park: two jungle gyms on a fifth of an acre.

The project was more than just an effort to increase the city’s green space. City Council members made clear that one of the park’s principal reasons for existence was to force 33 people on the California sex offender registry who were living in a nearby apartment building to move out. State law bars those on its registry from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school.

“We came together, working with the police department, to problem-solve, to send a message that Harbor Gateway cannot be dumped upon with a high number of registered sex offenders,” councilman Joe Buscaino said (Video) at the park’s opening.
- Just imaging how much money would be wasted if all grandstanding politician were to put pocket parks all over the state just so they can "look tough" on ex-sex offenders?  That is all this is, grandstanding!

But the state ban itself already clusters registrants into a limited number of areas, according to a September 2011 report by the California Sex Offender Management Board, which was created by the state legislature to advise it on sex offender policies.

California hasn’t been alone in its tough approach to ensuring that formerly incarcerated sex offenders pose no danger after they are released. As part of a wave of new sex offender laws starting in the mid-1990s, about 30 states and thousands of cities and towns passed such residency restrictions—prompting in turn a pushback from civil liberties advocates, state legislators and registrants themselves who argued the restrictions were not only unduly harsh but counterproductive.

But a court decision in Colorado last year could mark a shift in momentum.

In the Colorado case, _____, a high school soccer coach convicted in 2001 for a consensual sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student, was sentenced to seven years’ probation and put on the state sex offender registry.

Eleven years later, in 2012, he and his wife bought a house in the city of Englewood. But the police department told him he couldn’t live there because of a city ordinance prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, parks and playgrounds—a law that effectively made 99 percent of its homes and rentals off limits to offenders.

Englewood police also warned offenders that even in the open one percent, if they contacted a homeowner whose property wasn’t for rent or for sale, they could be charged with trespassing.

_____ sued, and last August a federal court concluded that the city’s ban went too far.

The judge ruled that it conflicted with the state’s existing system for managing and reintegrating sex offenders and could encourage other towns and cities to do the same, effectively barring offenders from the entire state. Englewood has appealed, but two of the state’s five other cities that have residence bans have softened their restrictions since the decision.

The other three are awaiting the outcome of the appeal, according to John Krieger of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado, which represented Ryals.

Read the rest of the article

AL - Law banning sex offender camp might violate Alabama's constitution

Original Article

07/03/2014

By JAY REEVES

CLANTON - A new law used to shut down a church-affiliated camp for convicted sex offenders in rural Alabama violates a state constitutional amendment designed to protect religious liberty, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday.

Randall Marshall, legal director of the ACLU's Alabama office, said the law that went into effect this week is in apparent conflict with the Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment, passed in 1998 to make it tougher for government to infringe on religious rights.

Pastor Ricky Martin says he built a church in rural Chilton County and allowed convicted sex offenders to move to the property because the men had nowhere else to live. He said he was trying to follow biblical instructions to help the outcast.

The camp, which began accepting former inmates in 2010, closed when the new law took effect Tuesday.

Marshall said the amendment "raises serious questions" about the law, which was passed this year and affects Chilton County only. The amendment says laws can restrict religion narrowly only if there is a "compelling governmental interest."

Martin "has sincerely held religious beliefs that he's acting upon, and now you've got government prohibiting him from doing something that he considers part of his religion," Marshall said.

The sponsor of the bill, state Rep. Kurt Wallace, said the law is meant to protect the public from people convicted of rape, child molestation and other crimes.

Most of the more than 50 men who've lived in the camp through the years are from other counties and states, officials said.

"No religion is being disenfranchised," Wallace said. "He can practice any religion he wants, but he can't recruit sex offenders to our community. That's just crazy."

Martin hasn't sued to block the law, but he said he might. Some of the half-dozen men who were living in old campers behind his Triumph Church are now homeless, he said.

"I don't know what they're doing, just walking around trying to find a place to sleep," he said.

The law, which Wallace said was drafted with Martin's refuge in mind, prohibits two convicted sex offenders from living within 300 feet of each other on the same property in Chilton County unless they are married. It includes a provision to allow a state-approved counseling center or halfway house if one opened, Wallace said.

Martin, who serves as a volunteer prison chaplain, said the camp was needed because inmates serving time for sex-related offenses have a hard time finding suitable residences after release.

Like other states, Alabama restricts the areas where sex offenders are required to live, barring anyone convicted of certain crimes to reside within 2,000 feet of a school or day care. Laws are even stricter about where offenders can work or hang out, restricting them from being within 500 feet of parks, athletic fields or businesses where kids gather.

Inmates serving time for sex crimes must tell authorities where they plan to live following their release, and prisons or county jails must continue holding anyone who can't prove they have a legal place to live.

See Also:

• New law forces Chilton. Co. sex offenders to leave pastor’s backyard

NH - Editorial: Sex offender registry law is unconstitutional

Original Article

05/07/2014

Today, New Hampshire’s Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that will turn on the basic constitutional principle that criminal laws cannot be retroactive, thus punishing someone for an act that was legal at the time. Nor can the punishment for a crime be changed after the fact.

Though the case concerns a sex offender, the principle applies to every crime, and fairness dictates that the court uphold the state constitution’s requirement that “retrospective laws are highly injurious, oppressive and unjust.”

The case involves a man convicted of sexually assaulting his 14-year-old stepdaughter a quarter-century ago. For purposes of disclosure, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union sued on his behalf, and he is being represented by William Chapman, a Concord lawyer who often represents this newspaper.

The man, now a disabled senior citizen, was convicted before a 1998 state law required that sex offenders register with authorities. That law has since been toughened roughly a dozen times. The registry, once confidential and available primarily to law enforcement, is now public.

Today, an offender’s name, address, photograph, conviction date and crime are all posted on a state website for all to see, and people on the registry are required to personally appear before local police four times per year.

The outcome could turn, as it did when the U.S. Supreme Court heard a similar case involving an Alaska sex offender registration law in 2003, on whether the court considers listing on the registry to be a punishment or regulation necessary to protect the public.

In the Alaska case, the high court deemed, in a split ruling, that registration is a regulation necessary to protect the public and thus not punitive.

In truth it was both, but since then the internet has exponentially increased the punitive effect of the registry.

Inclusion on it for life is the equivalent of the Colonial-era practice of “shaming,” which required that offenders wear a sign proclaiming their crime.

Think adulteress Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.

Meanwhile, the public protection value of the registry remains doubtful. The overwhelming majority of those convicted of a sexual offense never re-offend, but it is next to impossible, once on the registry, to get off it with expert testimony or good behavior. That makes the registry so inclusive that it is of little use in alerting the public to convicts who remain dangerous.

In the Alaska Supreme Court case, then Justice David Souter voted to uphold the law out of respect for the legislative process, but he also wrote that “the fact that the Act uses past crime as the touchstone, probably sweeping in a significant number of people who pose no real threat to the community, serves to feed suspicion that something more than regulation of safety is going on; when a legislature uses prior convictions to impose burdens that outpace the law’s stated civil aims, there is room for serious argument that the ulterior purpose is to revisit past crimes, not prevent future ones.”

Appearance on the sex offender registry exposes those on it to humiliation, discrimination in employment and housing, threats and potential violence. It also leads to homelessness, which, because it makes offenders harder to track, is counterproductive.

For years, a disturbingly high number of people have been convicted of embezzling funds from their employer, town government, local sports league or nonprofit. Could the Legislature suddenly decide that the public needs to be protected from them, too, and pass a law requiring that, no matter when their offense was committed, their photograph and address should appear on a public website for all time?
- They should, to be fair!  If it's "okay" to violate one groups rights, then they should do it to everybody so we are all treated equally!

We say no, that would be retroactive punishment and thus unconstitutional. The same principle holds in the case being argued today.

MN - Reform on sex offenders stalls in Minnesota Legislature

Lucinda Jesson

Original Article

04/14/2014

By ABBY SIMONS

Judge has ordered state program overhauled, but doing so means huge political risks for legislators.

The pressure to overhaul a state sex offender treatment program that has been called “clearly broken” by a federal judge is mounting daily, but the Legislature may not act in time to prevent court intervention.

With just weeks to go in the session, Gov. Mark Dayton and legislators are blaming one another for failing to address the problems identified by Judge Donovan Frank. In February, Frank called on state lawmakers to take immediate action or face a court-ordered remedy.

But little has happened since then.

Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson, whose department oversees the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), said recently that she had hoped for a different outcome this session. “I’m disappointed,” she said. “I’m concerned about the lack of progress toward overall system reform.”

Leaving the program as it is heightens the possibility that the federal courts could, at some point, declare it unconstitutional and order the release of hundreds of the state’s most violent sex offenders. There is precedent for such dramatic intervention: In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California’s overcrowded prisons amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the state to reduce its inmate population by 30,000.

Dayton said he asked the Legislature to approve $3 million for professional evaluation of sex offenders — a specific requirement to meet Frank’s order — and said he still expects lawmakers to approve it. “I hope we will get that money,” the governor said. “I don’t know why anyone would object to up-to-date psychological evaluations so we know what we’re dealing with.”
- Why do you need $3 million to evaluate something?  There are a ton of studies out there that have already been done on the subject of sex offenders and civil commitment, if you'd look and stop trying to waste more money and delay the process.

Minnesota’s program holds nearly 700 sex offenders — more per capita than any comparable program in other states. With costs far higher than prison costs, its outlays also have exploded. The state has been criticized in the past for doing too little to prove that those in its care are receiving an actual course of treatment rather than just being held indefinitely after serving their prison sentences.

Critics of the sex offender program say they are not surprised by legislative foot-dragging. Addressing the civil rights of serial rapists and child molesters in an election year, they say, is tantamount to political suicide.
- Not all sex offenders are serial rapists and child molesters!

“If they fix [the MSOP], I can tell you in November they’re the ones that are going to be accused of endangering all the women in Minnesota, and they know it’s gonna be ugly,” said Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the ACLU of Minnesota, which has advocated for the confined in the lawsuit before Frank.

‘Need bipartisan support’

Last spring, the state Senate passed a bill to reform the program by modeling it after programs in New York and Wisconsin, but a companion bill faltered in the House. A similar Senate measure drafted this year also stalled.

Dayton said that he does not expect lawmakers to approve a wholesale makeover this year.

“I’ve always thought realistically it’s going to have to wait until the 2015 legislative session,” he said, “and I hope we have enough courage to deal with it ourselves.”

Senate Minority Leader David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, said that Dayton should be providing a specific blueprint for lawmakers and leading the efforts for change.

“I’ve been around here long enough to know that when governors want something, they get it 90 percent of the time,” Hann said. “And this governor has not made this a priority. This is his administration administering the program, and if anyone should know what direction to take, he should be the one.”

House Speaker Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, has said that House Republicans must cooperate with DFLers to forge a sturdy plan for overhauling the existing arrangement.

“For something that’s as important as this, we do need bipartisan support,” Thissen said. “It’s an issue of fundamental public safety.”

Political reality

In addition to public safety, both sides need the other to join them in any proposed solution in order to limit finger-pointing. But House Minority Leader Rep. Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said there are legitimate differences on approaches to reform that pose a barrier to legislative change.

“My impression is that the Democrats right now have their mind wrapped around some kind of less-restrictive alternative for the current population, and I think this would be incredibly unpopular,” Daudt said. “The public doesn’t support it because the public understands this is a dangerous population and they don’t want these people living next door to them.”

Warren Maas, executive director of Project Pathfinder, which works with sex offenders to prevent recidivism, fully understands the political realities. Maas was there, shortly after Frank’s order, when the Minnesota chapter of the Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers held an informational session for all 201 legislators, offering assistance in the event of MSOP reform.

Six lawmakers showed up.

“I think for most of them it wasn’t a priority,” Maas said. “But for some of them it was whatever the opposite of priority is. Some of the legislators are pretty adamant that they’re not going to lift a finger. They’re going to let the court system take the hit on the issue of release from MSOP.”

Maas said he wasn’t surprised: The public’s revulsion to sex offenders becomes “low-hanging fruit for negative political messaging.”

Maas said the lawmakers who did show up were engaged, attentive and interested, but their numbers were too few to make a difference.

“It’s a huge disservice not just to offenders but to the community at large,” he said. “We’re wasting a lot of time demonizing a group of people who have the second-lowest recidivism rate among criminals, and nobody wants to hear that.”

FL - Miami: Sex Offender Panel

Original Article

Time
Saturday, March 15, 2014 at 5:00 pm

Location
Books and Books
265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134 (Map)

Contact
Books and Books - (305) 442-4408

Miami-Dade County’s sex-offender residency restrictions raise fundamental questions concerning the protection of both civil liberties and public safety. Join us for this important discussion, moderated by CBS4′s Jim DeFede.

Our panel will include:

• Marc Sarnoff, Miami city commissioner
• Dawn Thompson, assistant executive director, Kristi House child advocacy center
• Gail Colletta, president, Florida Action Committee, an organization seeking evidence based reform of policies for managing sex offenders in the community
• Eric Imhof, psychologist who specializes in the assessment and treatment of sex offenders
• Jeanne Baker, cooperating attorney on cases challenging sex-offender residency restrictions, ACLU of Florida Greater Miami Chapter