| American Civil Liberties Union City spar over sex offender law By Aubrey Hovey Tribune Reporter State District Judge Ted Baca will hear arguments Friday for and against Albuquerque's Sex Offender Alert Program, a law requiring sex offenders dating back to 1970 to enter a public registry and follow a host of other requirements. Baca is to decide whether to grant an injunction barring the enforcement of the recently enacted city law, which Mayor Martin Chavez characterized as one of the harshest in the country. The City Council and Chavez enacted the law to discourage sex offenders from settling in Albuquerque, but the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it as being an infringement of civil rights. In one corner stands Kari Morrissey, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing several sex offenders who feel the new law is unconstitutional. The law would require all offenders who committed sexual crimes after 1970 to inform potential landlords and employers of their offenses. The ordinance also would prohibit sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school. "Sex offender registration acts are created in order to make public information more accessible to the public," Morrissey said Wednesday. "This kicks people out of their houses. This puts people into the position where they can't successfully integrate into our community." The ACLU's sex offender witnesses won't be in court Friday, Morrissey said. "These guys are so scared of being anywhere where they're going to get media attention," she said. Albuquerque's most notorious sex offender, David Siebers, was assaulted and burned out of his home earlier this year after Chavez started a strongly publicized campaign to remove him from the city. "They certainly don't want to have their houses burned down, and they certainly don't want to be physically abused," Morrissey said. The only witness ACLU plans to call is Dr. Moss Aubrey, a forensic psychologist and New Mexico representative of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. Morrissey said she'll use Aubrey's testimony to show there are many levels of sex offenders and they not all of them have the same recidivism rate. Assistant City Attorney Greg Wheeler said the city plans to cross examine Aubrey and will try to use his testimony to demonstrate that "pedophilia is a sexual disease that does not appear to dissipate within a passing of time." The city will try to show the purpose of the ordinance is not to "be overly punitive to sex offenders," Wheeler said, but to "greatly enhance the protection of children by the government by providing information to the parents." But Morrissey says that the ordinance is "schoolyard bully stuff" and that the mayor has a different goal in mind. "The mayor went to law school, and he knows that this ordinance is unconstitutional. This is being done for political reasons," she said. "I hope that what really comes out of this is that someone realizes what this city needs is real leadership and not people who support unconstitutional deals." |
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