IA - The people's voice is angry: Outcry over sex offender's release fires up social media — but when does the fire get out of control?

Original Article

08/08/2014

By Sarah Tisinger

MUSCATINE - When a 23-year-old Muscatine man convicted of lascivious acts with a child was released from prison after serving four years of a 15-year sentence, the People of Muscatine exploded.

The outrage began after a July 30 post that appeared on the People of Muscatine Facebook page began taking on a life of its own. The post by the page's administrator was asking about the release of _____ from prison. Howard was sentenced to prison in 2010 after being found guilty of sexually abusing his girlfriend's baby son.

It didn't take long before responses to the post included death threats, graphic descriptions of bodily mutilation, and even jokes about _____'s arrest. The anger wasn't directed entirely at _____. One post said that the child's mother should be "stomped." Another person, who posted a defense of _____, was the target of outrage: "I guess Jessica needs to have her baby molested by this [man] to feel different."

The original post, and others after it, generated several hundred comments, nearly 50,000 views, and attracted the attention of KWQC-TV, who reported on _____'s release under the headline, "Child sex offender released early from prison."

What got lost in the public's outcry was the fact that _____'s release wasn't really early. He was released exactly when the law allowed.

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IA - Sex Offenders No More? Iowa Reconsiders Tough Law on HIV Exposure

Leslie Flaggs

Original Article

03/29/2014

By MIRANDA LEITSINGER

In 2006, a few years after Leslie Flaggs learned she had contracted HIV, she made a new friend at her church in Sioux City, Iowa. As her relationship with the man turned from Bible study to intimacy, Flaggs said, she revealed to him that she had the disease.

But the man went to police in May 2007 and said she hadn’t disclosed her HIV status until after they’d slept together. Flaggs says that because she feared the man – who was convicted of domestic abuse-assault for hitting her two weeks before he filed his complaint, according to court documents – she didn’t challenge his story to police.

Flaggs agreed to a plea bargain rather than face the alternative: up to a quarter century in prison as mandated by a state law targeting criminal exposure to HIV. She received a 25-year suspended sentence, four years of probation and a decade on the sex offender registry. Prosecutors at the time said her accuser did not acquire HIV; the law applies whether or not victims are infected. NBC News could not reach him recently for comment.

For Flaggs, 53, living with the disease and being on the sex offender registry has been so hard that she has contemplated suicide. “This has taken my life," she said. "I feel like I’m in prison.”

But things may soon change for people living with HIV in Iowa: Lawmakers are debating whether to repeal the state law on criminal exposure and replace it with one that would impose more moderate sentences and would better reflect current medical understanding of how the disease is transmitted. If the legislation is approved, Iowa would be one of the first states to revise its decades-old statute that imposes criminal sentences for HIV exposure. HIV/AIDS advocates have long been fighting for such changes to the more than 30 state laws nationwide (PDF), but they’ve often met resistance.

“We’ve got to get this done this year,” said Tami Haught, of an Iowa nonprofit, Community HIV/Hepatitis Advocates of Iowa Network (Facebook). She last month watched another Iowan receive a sentence similar to Flaggs’, and yet another state resident recently challenged his conviction for not disclosing his status to a partner even though he used a condom. “We can’t open up any other Iowan to this kind of prosecution when it is so unjust.”

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IA - Bills in memory of slain Iowa teenager sail through Senate committee

Original Article

02/13/2014

By Mike Wiser

Bills expand the definition and penalties for kidnapping

DES MOINES - A pair of bills drafted in the memory of slain Dayton teenager Kathlynn Shepard sailed through a Senate committee Thursday.

Senate Study Bills 3079 and 3076 expand the definition and penalties for kidnapping and allow authorities to consider the content of sealed juvenile records when sentencing sexually violent predators, respectively.

“May 20 was the worst day of my life. It was the day my daughter was kidnapped with her friend,” Denise Shepard told lawmakers during a subcommittee hearing. “Reading the autopsy report of what he did to my daughter broke me.”

_____, of rural Stratford, abducted Kathlynn Shepard and Dezi Hughes, then 15 and 12, and took them to a hog confinement facility where he worked. _____ killed Shepard and tried to dispose of her body in a river. _____ later killed himself. Hughes was able to escape when _____ separated the girls after the kidnapping.

_____ was released from the state prison system in 2011 after serving 20 years for two 1991 kidnapping convictions. The first involved a 21-year-old woman he tried to assault. The other involved a pair of 3-year-olds he snatched from a day-care center. The children were found hours later, alive, in a garbage bin.

_____ also had a sealed juvenile conviction that the judge couldn't consider during the sentencing in the 1991 cases.

“As a parent of three children, it is unimaginable for me to understand what you have gone through,” Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids and sponsor of the two bills told Denise Shepard, who attended the hearing with her husband and two others. Each wore purple T-shirts commemorating events held in Kathlynn’s honor.

She said the two bills are just a start.

“I personally would like to see a horrendous sex offender or kidnapper, you do it once, you’re put away forever,” she said. “But unfortunately, I don’t get to vote on making those rules. This is the first step in making sure we get something on the books as soon as possible and see if we can, down the road, get something that will make it harder for these sex offenders.”

IA - STATE v. STRINGER

Original Article

Excerpt:
Stringer appeals the court's denial of his application to remove the requirement that he complete sex offender treatment as a condition of his probation. Stringer pled guilty to prostitution, in violation of Iowa Code section 725.1 (2011), following a police sting operation where Stringer offered an undercover police officer $40 for sex. He was sentenced to 365 days in jail, that sentence was suspended, and he was placed on probation for two years. Stringer contends the crime of prostitution is not a sex offense under section 692A.102, and his criminal history does not justify the imposition of sex offender treatment as a condition of his probation.

The State did not file a resistance to Stringer's application, and it does not appear that it offered any evidence in support of the sex-offender-treatment condition at the unreported hearing. The district court denied the application finding sex offender treatment "will promote rehabilitation of the defendant or the protection of the community" and is "reasonably related to the offense involved." The court went on to say that "[w]hile prostitution is not classified as a sexually violent offense under Iowa law, it is sexual in nature. Further, defendant does have a false imprisonment conviction stemming from a sexual encounter. In addition, defendant's psychological evaluation describes a number of other prostitution-related encounters." The court concluded by finding a nexus between the present conviction and the sex offender treatment as a condition of probation.

"[T]rial courts have a broad discretion in probation matters which will be interfered with only upon a finding of abuse of that discretion." State v. Valin, 724 N.W.2d 440, 444 (Iowa 2006). "`[O]ur task on appeal is not to second-guess the decision made by the district court but to determine if it was unreasonable or based on untenable grounds.'" Id. at 445 (quoting State v. Formaro, 638 N.W.2d 720, 725 (Iowa 2002)). We will find an abuse of discretion "when `there is no support for the decision in the . . . evidence.'" Id. (quoting Rath v. Sholty, 199 N.W.2d 333, 336 (Iowa 1972)).

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