Articles Concerning Sex Offender Issues ©
Articles Concerning Sex Offender Issues © |
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News Articles from yesterday and before
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Remember what Keen, primary sponsor of the incompetently crafted sex offender legislation HB 1059 told his colleagues in the Legislature: "We want people running away from Georgia. Given the toughest laws here, we think a lot of people could move to another state. If it becomes too onerous and too inconvenient, they just may want to live somewhere else. And I don't care where, as long as it's not in Georgia." Sex offenders unable to comply with the tough standards, Keen said, "will, in many cases, have to move to another state." ..more.. : by Kaffie Sledge at 706-571-8585 or ksledge@ledger-enquirer.com
The court warned that sex offenders could be forced to leave their homes if a facility catering to children springs up nearby. "It is apparent that there is no place in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at risk of being ejected," read the unanimous opinion, written by presiding Justice Carol Hunstein. [[[snip]]] Earlier this week, Baker's officer said the court's ruling appeared to apply to all Georgia sex offenders and he advised law enforcement officials to stop enforcing it. Georgia law enforcement officials had asked for guidance from Baker's office. Jane Hansen, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Supreme Court, said Thursday it was unclear when the justices would consider Baker's request. ..more.. : by SHANNON McCAFFREY - Associated Press Writer
Over the past few months, we've been hearing news reports of kids having sex in school: in the classroom, the school bathroom, even on the bus. As these stories became more and more frequent, we began to wonder if these were isolated incidences or part of a disturbing national trend. We consulted our friends at Cosmo Girl and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and they'd been wondering the same thing. So we decided to do a national survey on sex in schools—the first study of its kind to be conducted in the United States. We surveyed kids age 12-17 from around the country. And what we found was shocking: One in five kids have witnessed sex in schools. ..more.. : by Mom Logic.com
Longer sentences and the transfer of juvenile offenders to the adult system gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s as youth crime increased. The trend raised fears in statehouses and in Congress about young predators, and laws to push more juvenile offenders into the adult system flourished. ..more.. : by Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post Staff Writer
Martin, 46, of Lutherville, is charged with trying to hire an inmate in the Baltimore County jail to kill the prosecutor who handled a 2005 sex-abuse case against him, injure another prosecutor, break the knees of a police detective and set fire to the home of an elderly woman who had told people at Martin's church about the abuse case. [[[snip]]] Martin, who has worked as an information technology specialist, pleaded guilty in January 2006 to a fourth-degree sex offense against a girl when she was 9 and 10 years old. The girl told authorities that Martin inappropriately touched her and showed her pictures of scantily clad children on his computer, according to court documents. A Police Department civilian computer expert found pictures on Martin's computer similar to those the girl described. Shortly after Martin's guilty plea in the sex-abuse case, the computer expert got two threatening e-mails from an untraceable source that made reference to his sister, a Towson University employee, court records show. One read, "u admit to tampering with evidence and [the sister] makes it through the semester. U don't and bets are off," according to the documents. Also, a woman who told members of Martin's church that he was a sex offender, got an anonymous call from a person who said in part, "I didn't know you had grandbabies," court records show. On Feb. 1, 2006, police searched Martin's car and found a loaded shotgun, a large combat knife and directions to the homes of the computer expert and a relative of the woman who had received the call about her grandchildren. [[[snip]]] Investigators found evidence on Martin's computers that the defendant had searched the Internet for information about some of his alleged targets as well as directions to their homes, a forensic computer examiner with the county Police Department testified. Police also found on the computers photographs of the elderly woman's house and of the building where Baltimore County police Detective Judy Duncan worked, the computer examiner said. Martin wanted Duncan's knees broken and prosecutor John Cox castrated - although he told Bryce that he would take care of them himself "at some point," according to charging documents. "The efforts that the defendant went through are frightening," Webster told jurors during his opening statement. ..more.. : by Jennifer McMenamin | sun reporter
Now Joe Alioto Veronese, a San Francisco police commissioner and candidate for State Senate, has launched an effort to force the local police to roust sex offender parolees who live in San Francisco. It's good politics for someone who wants a high-profile campaign issue, but it's bad law enforcement policy. Veronese wants the San Francisco Police Department to go out and find every one of these transients and, if they aren't in fact homeless, arrest them for parole violation. That's going to take a lot of police time — and is unlikely to be terribly effective. For starters, it's not the job of the SFPD to monitor parolees. The state's Department of Corrections does that — and every transient parolee has to check in with his or her parole officer every single day anyway. Veronese told us he doesn't expect the SFPD to send ex-offenders back to prison — but if they're arrested, that's exactly what will happen. ..more.. : by SFBG Editorial
"The Georgia Supreme Court has opened the door to every convicted sex offender in the country and told them, 'Welcome to Georgia! Live anywhere you want to,'" Keen said Monday. "At a time when other states are passing and strengthening their residency requirements for sex offenders, our (Supreme Court) threw out our entire resident requirement statute," he said. [[[snip]]] Keen said he is working feverishly to pre-file legislation before the next legislative session in January to amend the state constitution. "We cannot appeal the ruling because the Supreme Court wrote it in such a way that they say (the law) violates the Georgia Constitution," he said. "They were very crafty in doing it that way so that the Attorney General can't even appeal to the federal courts." Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Center for Human Rights, have argued that the law would unconstitutionally force some sex offenders to move from their place of residence, even if they were living there prior to the establishment of a day care center or church. ..more.. : by EMILY STRANGER
The difficulties include the impracticality of tracking sex offenders who no longer must report to parole or probation officers, the lack of any penalty for those who refuse to cooperate with monitoring and the question of whether such widespread tracking is effective in protecting the public. The biggest issue, however, is that the law does not specify which agency or government should monitor felony sex offenders -- and shoulder hundreds of millions of dollars a year in related costs. ..more.. : by Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Because the law addressed a challenge raised by a Clayton County homeowner who was told he had to move when a day care center was built within 1,000 feet of his house, some lawyers who examined the ruling questioned whether it applied to all 15,000 registered offenders — including those who rent or live in places for free. The state attorney general's office believes that it does and will soon send out a letter stating its position, spokesman Russ Willard said. "Our office is currently advising our clients how to proceed now that the Georgia Supreme Court has struck down the sex offender residency restrictions," he said. ..more.. : by BILL RANKIN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A 2002 review by the federal government of 111 studies on the effect of criminal justice sanctions found that harsher punishment actually increased recidivism. Today, the recidivism rate is up to 80 per cent. This bill is a subtle change from Canada’s history of rehabilitating prisoners and reintegrating them back into society towards the American-style justice system, where people spend decades in jail for minor drug offences. Tougher penalties don’t reduce crime, they increase the number of criminals. After 13 years of the “soft on crime” Liberals, Canada had its lowest crime rate in 25 years. Contrast this with the numbers Statistics Canada released Wednesday, which show that the incarceration rate rose for the first time in more than a decade, mainly due to the increased number of people spending time in jail awaiting trial or sentencing. These numbers will only rise as these offences work their way through the system. ..more.. : Editorial McGill Daily
The 4th Amendment to the Constitution forbids the police to search a residence without a warrant. But the home inspections in San Diego County are different, judges said, because they do not seek evidence of a crime. Instead, they are intended to determine whether welfare recipients qualify for benefits. ..more.. : by David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Certainly some statistics may help ease the pain of Fuller. Sex crimes devastate numerous people. Ninety-seven percent of all sex crimes are committed by someone known to the victims. The fear is actually of the known, not the unknown, which is where Fuller lives in her mind. People we tend to trust or people certified by our own government to trust, such as teachers, are abusers. Registries and residency restrictions have done nothing to reduce an already low recidivism rate. Remember only seven percent of sex crimes involve strangers. Furthermore, only a small percentage of those offenders kidnap, murder or rape young children unknown to them. So who does the registry and local ordinances protect? ..more.. : Opinion: Dexter Newbury
The new law, which took effect July 1, won unanimous approval in the Ohio Senate. But there are serious questions about whether legislators even knew what the law would require. Passed under pressure from the federal government, the law creates a classification system so severe that some juveniles convicted of sexual misconduct could be branded as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. But far from enhancing public safety, some policy analysts say, the new law could backfire - making it harder for former offenders to stay out of trouble and making it more difficult for victims of sexual abuse to get help. How did the law make it so easily through the legislature? The first answer is politics. ..more.. : by Margo Pierce
“Statistics are only useful if they can actually be used for something and, in the case of homeless sex offender, what is their use? How do you monitor sex offenders living under bridges or in back of shopping centers or abandoned cars, houses or shelters? Of what use is the monitoring if you can’t find them?” Strict local actions to keep sex offenders out of neighborhoods or away from areas where children gather may have led to this new problem. “We now have a population of known sex offenders who have become ‘invisible’ for all intents and purposes. Once they move, who handles the local registration, who does the follow-up and who handles any aftercare? For that matter, who’s doing research to find effective treatment for these offenders to keep them from reoffending?” ..more.. : by Dr. Patricia A. Farrell
For some experts, the steady drop in arrests in the middle of intense public scrutiny is a mystery; other officials say heightened monitoring explains the drop. FBI reports show that arrests are down across the country, falling from 70,237 in 1997 to 63,243 last year. The decline in both reported rapes and arrests for sex offenses nationwide began in the early 1990s, before many of today's get-tough measures were implemented. ..more.. : by Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic
But others are dismissing those concerns, saying the ruling has instead brought much-needed legal protections to those wrongly accused of child abuse and neglect. The disagreement centers on one facet of a ruling that altered the process by which names are added to the state's Central Registry of likely abusers. Advertisement ..more.. : by Matthew Franck
The requirements also have nothing to do with interstate commerce and thus Congress has no power to require the rules be implemented by the states, he said. Truitt further accused Congress of improperly delegating to the attorney general the power to decide how to apply the law to defendants accused of violating the requirements before they took effect. This is the case with his client, who is accused of violating the registry law before it took effect July 27, 2006. "These are decisions of Congress," he wrote. ..more.. : by BOB KASARDA
The decision in , 07 Civ. 2935, did not involve challenges to the constitutionality of civil confinement, which has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, plaintiffs alleged several procedural defects in the New York law.” This is a blow to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, as the deal on civil confinement was one of the earliest - and loudly tumpeted - successes of his nascent administration, and also an agreement he managed to reach with the ehretofore intractable Assembly Democrats when his predecessor, Republican Gov. George pataki, could not. ..more.. : by Daily News
The law had been targeted by civil rights groups who argued it would render vast residential areas off-limits to Georgia's roughly 11,000 registered sex offenders and could backfire by encouraging offenders to stop reporting their whereabouts to authorities. [[[snip]]] The Georgia Supreme Court ruling said even sex offenders who comply with the law "face the possibility of being repeatedly uprooted and forced to abandon homes." It also said the statute looms over every location that a sex offender chooses to call home and notes while the case in question particularly involves a day care center, "next time it could be a playground, a school bus stop, a skating rink or a church." ..more.. : by CNN.com ... Georgia Supreme court decision
Has the program improved public safety? No one knows. The state has never studied the results of this relatively new and controversial approach to crime prevention. But that hasn't stopped the Ohio General Assembly from passing a much tougher version of the law, requiring even more people to register as sex offenders, and for longer periods. The new law, which took effect July 1, won unanimous approval in the Ohio Senate. But there are serious questions about whether legislators even knew what the law would require. Passed under pressure from the federal government, the law creates a classification system so severe that some juveniles convicted of sexual misconduct could be branded as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. But far from enhancing public safety, some policy analysts say, the new law could backfire - making it harder for former offenders to stay out of trouble and making it more difficult for victims of sexual abuse to get help. How did the law make it so easily through the legislature? ..more.. : by Margo Pierce
Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from 7,163 incidents reported in 2005. More than half the incidents were motivated by racial prejudice, but the report did not even pick up all the racially motivated incidents last year. ..more.. : by Associated Press. Full Statistics Here
The case of Kennedy v. Louisiana (docket 07-343) poses a direct test of whether states may constitutionally impose the death penalty for any crime other than murder. And, in particular, it tests whether a death sentence is a disproportionate penalty, under the Eighth Amendment, for raping a child. The petition, filed Sept. 11, is discussed in this post, which includes links to the petition and to the Louisiana Supreme Court decision upholding the law at issue. ..more.. : by ScotusBlog. Briefs .. Brief .. Brief
This came just hours before a gag order had been issued in the investigation of two teenage boys accused of “thrill killing.” Suspect Jean Pierre Orlewicz’s attorney filed the gag order after Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Orlewicz, 17, and Alexander James Letkemann, 18, had carefully planned the slaying and beheading of Daniel Sorensen for no other reason than the “thrill” of it. [[[snip]]] Worthy said in a news conference Monday that neither money nor drugs appeared to be the motive when Orlewicz allegedly lured Sorensen, 26, to Orlewicz's grandfather's home on Nov. 7 "for the purpose of killing him" in a “gruesome” manner. Orlewicz's attorney said her comments and other media terminology may affect the jury pool. Honorable Michael Gerou of the 35th District Court agreed. He said, "Subpoenaed witnesses, clerks and officials in attendance to the court be forbidden from disclosing to agents and employees of the media, including newspapers, magazines, television stations, radio stations and Internet-based media organizations information regarding the subject matter of this case." ..more.. : by ClickOnDetroit.com
The defendant had argued during his trial that the jury be instructed that a conviction required that he knew the sale occurred within 1,000 feet of school property. The trial judge rejected the argument, but it was upheld by the Oregon Court of Appeals. The Oregon Supreme Court reversed the appeals court, saying that requiring knowledge of the distance from the school only would give drug dealers an incentive to claim they did not know how close they were to school grounds. ..more.. : by WILLIAM MCCALL
Burned, headless man is ID'd as child sex offender Other news organizations carried similar accounts, identifying the slain Daniel Sorensen variously as a "sex offender," "a registered sex offender" and "a man convicted of criminal sexual conduct." Police weren't yet speculating about possible motives, but if you are an amateur sleuth like me you probably leaped to the same conclusions I did: Revenge killing. What goes around, comes around. Well, he'll never rape anyone else's kid. These were reasonable deductions -- based, as we say in my business, on the best information we had at the time. They were also dead wrong -- and as monstrously unfair to Daniel Sorensen as the way he died. ..more.. : by BRIAN DICKERSON, FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
The lawsuit, filed this month by Jay Usategui of Hope Mills, is an early test of a new state law that calls for more aggressive monitoring of certain sex offenders. About 114 sex offenders are monitored under the new program, state correction officials said. Usategui (USE-a-ta-gooey), who pleaded guilty in 2003 to taking indecent liberties with a 15-year-old girl, wears a bulky ankle bracelet and carries a 2-pound monitoring device. The device transmits a signal to a satellite, which allows officials to use mapping software to locate an offender. ..more.. : by Titan Barksdale, Staff Writer
But Michigan changed its parole system in 1992, replacing a parole board made up of civil servants with political appointees. The new board summarized its thinking in a presentation to the state’s judges in 2001: “A life sentence means life in prison.” Mr. Hessell was released the other day, thanks in part to a decision from a federal judge in Detroit last month ruling that the state had violated the ex post facto clause of the Constitution when it changed the parole rules. The clause says the government cannot increase punishments retroactively. ..more.. : by ADAM LIPTAK. Court decision:
NBC hired the vigilante group for its controversial To Catch a Predator series and is expected to pay the group an additional $450,000 this year, per the documents, and another $600,000 next year if the network airs all of the episodes it is expected to produce with Perverted Justice. Undercover FBI agents should be so lucky to earn that level of pay for doing the same work and much more. Radar uncovered the documents, which Perverted Justice founder Xavier Von Erck (pictured above) filed with the IRS to obtain tax-exempt status for the group. Per the documents, Von Erck and his two staff members each earn $120,000 a year. Radar notes, in comparison, that the average salary earned by executive directors of nonprofit organizations in 2005 was less than $100,000. This is the first time that the extent of NBC's financial arrangement with the vigilante group has been made public. Radar reports that NBC declined to comment. ..more.. : by Wired.com
Circuit Court Judge Henry A. Vanover imposed the sentence based in part on the results of a penile plethysmograph, a controversial device akin to a polygraph. The machine measures blood flow to the penis. Matthew E. Billips was convicted of two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of soliciting a child to perform sodomy. Billips was living at a relative's house in May 2003 when he exchanged oral sex with the boy and tried to persuade another young boy to commit the same act, according to the trial evidence. ..more.. : by Tim McGlone. Also court decision is there.
When: Utah Supreme Court rules on October 26. Outcome: Guilty verdict upheld. What happened, according to court documents and other sources: A few years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law banning certain computer-generated images of unclothed minors was unconstitutional. The Child Pornography Prevention Act prohibited possessing "any visual depiction" including a "computer-generated image or picture" that "appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." In its majority opinion citing the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, the court ruled: "The provision abridges the freedom to engage in a substantial amount of lawful speech. For this reason, it is overbroad and unconstitutional." That might seem pretty straightforward. Except, that is, for the justices on the Utah Supreme Court. ..more.. : by Declan McCullagh
Her House Bill 5321 would prohibit parolees listed on Michigan's sex offender registry from answering the door, handing out candy, turning on outside lights or "doing anything else that would convey the impression that their residence is occupied" on Oct. 31. "If the offender turns on a light on Halloween," the Waterford lawmaker explains, "people can report them to the police." Never a legislator to let substance stand in the way of sensation, Amos admits that she is unable to cite a single instance in which any registered sex offender has assaulted, seduced or otherwise victimized Michigan trick-or-treaters. Critics may also complain that a few thousand of the "Halloween predators" her bill targets are on parole for nothing more sinister than consorting with consenting underage peers. ..more.. : by BRIAN DICKERSON, FREE PRESS COLUMNIST |
Each group testified this week against a bill sponsored by Sen. Kevin Coughlin, R-Cuyahoga Falls, that would mandate the green plate for rapists and pedophiles on the sexual offender registry. Other groups opposed to the plates: the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies. [[[snip]]] The green plates would be required of people who commit certain sex crimes after the law passes. It would not be retroactive to cover the 16,260 sex offenders currently on Ohio's registry. The same idea was floated two years ago — requiring pink plates. The legislation died after making headlines. Ohio already mandates yellow plates for nearly 5,000 motorists convicted of drunken driving. ..more.. : by Laura A. Bischoff, Staff Writer
Barber, who is now a registered sex offender, set up www.iamaccused.org this year and intends to run it as a subscription-based service. To date, the only content on the site is a summary of the events that resulted in his December 2005 arrest on felony sex-crime charges. The rest of the site is still being developed. In late June 2006, Barber pleaded guilty to two counts of sexually assaulting his teenage stepdaughter. He received a two-year suspended sentence, three years of probation and was required to register as a sex offender. Barber has maintained his innocence, saying he pleaded guilty to avoid incarceration. When reached yesterday, Barber said he established the site in the spring as a business venture. "Long term, the hope here is to have a Web site for people to use as a resource," he said during a phone interview. "When I was arrested, [my wife] had nowhere to go for information about what to do." ..more.. : by JULIAN WALKER AND HOLLY PRESTIDGE, TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS
The reason, according to Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilber and others, is that there are few residences in many Iowa cities and towns that are not within 2,000 feet of a school or day care. The residency law has forced most sex offenders to move out of towns, or at least to pretend to move. "That's the biggest problem," Wilber said. "They just disappear." ..more.. : by KETV.com
A three-month review by Team 5 Investigates uncovered that the agency is made up of people who have landed there because of who they know, not necessarily what they know. Former Board Member Dr. David Medoff said, "The way that the registry is being run now, the way that they're classifying sex offenders now, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others who are trained in this area actually can in some instances undermine public safety." ..more.. : by The Boston Channel.com
One explanation for seeing little change: the ordinances typically don't require offenders to move if they were already living within child safety zones. [[[snip]]] Also, sex offenders registered with law enforcement represent only a small portion of those who commit sex crimes. Only 12 percent of sex offenses are reported and of those, only 1 percent result in convictions, Taylor said. "The majority (of sex offenders) will never be affected by these ordinances," she said. ..more.. : by The Associated Press
Kennedy, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, found that the statute's reach was "extremely broad," that the "breadth of the recordkeeping provisions" in this statute couldn't be narrowed, and "[Section] 2257's universal age-verification requirement runs afoul of the First Amendment." Moore, appointed by President Bill Clinton, agreed with Kennedy's reasoning for the decision, adding emphasis on the statute's violation of anonymity under the First Amendment. McKeague, appointed by President Bush, partially dissented on the decision disagreeing with the application of the doctrine and believed that portions of the section could be judicially salvaged. "We are absolutely thrilled," said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition. "It's a solid decision, and it's significant." The court's decision gives free speech and sex-positive advocates hope, but Duke cautioned that Congress and the Department of Justice have several options to challenge the court's decision. First, the government could ask all of the judges on the court to review the decision or to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Second, because the 6th Circuit only reviews cases arising from the federal courts in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, other states could consider the decision. Finally, Congress could rewrite the statute per the court's recommendations, removing what the judges found objectionable. ..more.. : by Heather Cassell (Court decision)
This week's incident forced the government yesterday to ensure neighbours are advised before an offender is housed in their street. Ms Spence today warned against adopting vigilante attitudes. She said people who tell the media or anyone else that an offender is headed to their community will be prosecuted and face a maximum two years' imprisonment or a $7,500 fine. [[[snip]]] Ms Spence said outing sex offenders could lead to attacks on innocent people. She referred to the case of a north Queensland woman, bashed by a group of men while out walking because she was the mother of a man accused of sex offences. "I believe it is totally irresponsible for the media and the opposition leader to encourage community members to out sex offenders and encourage community members to break the law," Ms Spence said. "If vigilante activity is encouraged there will be law-abiding people harmed and criminalised." ..more.. : by Brisbane Times
Having this debate is not a bad idea. It's about time that we rethought whether the Whois directory service--which has public contact information for domain name owners--should exist in its current form. Trademark and copyright holders, and their lobbyists, are opposing this move. They argue that a public Whois database is necessary to help track down trademark infringements, copyright infringements, and "cybersquatting." The American Intellectual Property Law Association even went so far as to claim that "accurate and available information is essential for law enforcement in crimes" (PDF), including "hate literature, terrorism, and child pornography," ignoring that so-called hate literature is constitutionally protected in the United States. (And I wonder how many terrorists and child pornographers will tell the truth when asked for their real home address when registering a domain.) ..more.. : by Declan McCullagh
The court took up a challenge to a provision of a 2003 federal law that sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting child porn. Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like "Traffic" or "Titanic" that depict adolescent sex. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the provision, saying it makes a crime out of merely talking about illegal images or possessing innocent materials that someone else might believe is pornography. ..more.. : by MARK SHERMAN
Legal experts say it’s rare for prosecutors to seek charges. But, as the Wilson case illustrates, they can and sometimes do. And the rising popularity of sex offender registries can often mean that a teen nabbed for nonviolent contact with someone a year or two younger might face the same public stigma as a dangerous sexual predator. ..more.. : by MSNBC
Wilson's attorney, B.J. Bernstein, told CNN she is working to gain his quick release, which could come "some time today." She said she called the prison warden, who has informed Wilson. "We've been praying for it every day," Bernstein said of the court's decision. Wilson can go free as soon as a Monroe County judge issues a new order and it is served to the attorney general and the department of corrections, she added. "We want him home," Bernstein said. "In the end it shows this: That the courts can work, the courts do work." She added that Wilson's mother, ..more.. : by CNN
"In my opinion, someone who has been convicted of that should not be at a place where that is taking place," Jones said. "Pedophiles are never cured. Science has never found a cure." ( To understand Sheriff Jones, one must assume he has found a cure for other types of crime? However, if that were true Sheriff Jones would be out of a job!) Elizabeth Arnovits, executive director of the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency, said the bill "is probably a good move politically," but it's unnecessary because such parolees already are ordered to stay away from activities involving children - and even that it is a "reasonably unenforceable law." ..more.. : by Gregory Herbert, Capital News Service
Kyle gave the picture to another child on the school bus, and that child's parents complained about it to school officials, McDevitt said. Her son told her the drawing was of a water gun, she said. A photocopy of the picture provided by McDevitt showed two stick figures with one pointing a crude-looking gun at the other, the newspaper said. What appeared to be the word "me" was written above the shooter, with another name scribbled above the other figure. School officials declined to comment Friday. A message left at the superintendent's office Saturday was not returned. ..more.. : by Pantagraph.com
There are no residential placement programs in Connecticut for convicted sex offenders and transitional housing programs don’t want to take them either, New London Superior Court Judge Susan Handy said Thursday. ..more.. : by Susan Haigh THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The law, effective Nov. 1, will make it a misdemeanor for the two highest levels of registered sex offenders to live or be within 1,500 feet of Oneida County parks, playgrounds, schools and child-care centers. Those who have already established residency are excepted from the law. While the residency law makes sense — and can be enforced — to make it illegal for sex offenders “to enter within” 1,500 feet of the specified sites is not only unenforceable, it’s ridiculous. Given the confines of that: * A sex offender who keeps an appointment at Slocum-Dickson Medical Center on Burrstone Road would be in violation because Notre Dame Jr. Sr. High School is nearby. * A sex offender who attends a daytime activity at St. Joseph/St. Patrick’s Church in West Utica would be in violation because the Thea Bowman House day care center is next door. ..more.. : by UticaOD.com
When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 — 40 years after that first little girl came forward — it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents. Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children. Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love. An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic. There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims. ..more.. : by Associated Press
Gerald Huddleston blindfolded three Livingston County girls, all younger than 12, and forced them into performing oral sex. All were Illinois teachers when they committed the crimes, authorities said. They are just three of at least 25 former Illinois educators whose teaching licenses were revoked or suspended due to sexual misconduct over a five-year period. The list, compiled from 2001 to 2005, reveals a litany of loathsome acts ranging from sexual assault to child pornography, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. ..more.. : by AP
Sorensen, 26, of River Rouge, was found dead Thursday at the end of a yet-to-be-developed subdivision cul-de-sac in Northville Township off Ridge Road just south of Maybury State Park. His severed head was found Saturday in a section of Hines Park located in Dearborn Heights. Sorensen had owed Orlewicz "small amounts" of money that weren't a factor in the premeditated killing, Worthy said. The men were acquaintances, but she declined to further detail their relationship. The pair killed Sorensen in a Canton Township home owned by Orlewicz's grandfather, Worthy alleged. "They lured him into a garage where a space had been prepared to kill him," Worth said. Worthy said the pair stabbed Sorensen in the back multiple times, then sawed off his head. The garage had been prepared with a tarp on the floor and cleaning supplies standing by to clean up the blood. She called the killing "bone-chilling." ..more.. : by Doug Guthrie and Darren A. Nichols / The Detroit News
The bill, from Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, is moving swiftly through the House after a series of wildfires burned more than half a million acres in Southern California. Officials say arsonists ignited at least two - one in Orange County and another in Santa Clarita. "The devastation of the recent catastrophic fires in California have called to the nation's attention the damage and destruction that fire can cause," Bono said. Last year, five U.S. Forest Service firefighters died in the Esperanza fire near Palm Springs. Officials determined the fire was caused by arson. [[[snip]]] In a 2004 study, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that about 17 percent of arsonists are convicted. Of convicted arsonists, more than half were arrested again within three years of being released from prison for arson or other crimes, according to a 2003 Justice Department analysis. Opponents of the bill say the registry would violate civil rights. ..more.. : by MyDesert.com
It will require convicted sex offenders to cough up all their personal computer information like all of their e-mail addresses and other accounts like MySpace pages they might have. That information is then provided to the public. "With the Internet, in today's environment, now people can prey on innocent children," Robson said. What this means is that parents like Kinnerup will be able to check out suspicious e-mails or MySpace messages that their kids receive by plugging the information into the Arizona Department of Public Safety's Web site. DPS is in charge of keeping tabs on sex offenders. If an e-mail address, for example, comes back to a convicted sex offender, Kinnerup will know. [[[snip]]] DPS says they've already had 50 percent of sex offenders register their computer information with them. If you search someone's e-mail address and get a hit, you won't be able to see who that sex offender is, but DPS says they'll be notified electronically. ..more.. : by Bart Treece
"It's about time" the court provided an e-mail filing system for such contingencies, said James C. Harrington, executive director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "It certainly goes a long way towards solving the problem." The problem stemmed from a Sept. 25 appeal for inmate Michael Richard. Defense lawyers called the clerk's office shortly before 5 p.m. to say they had suffered computer problems and asked the court to remain open so they could hand-deliver the appeal, as required. That morning, the U.S. Supreme Court had announced that it would hear a case on whether ingredients in a lethal injection might induce suffering that could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. The Texas defense lawyers were rushing to submit a new appeal based on the lethal injection question. Judge Keller was consulted and replied that the clerk's office closes at 5 p.m. She did not inform the judge who was assigned to the case, who was working in her office, awaiting the possible appeal. Higher courts refused to hear the appeal because it had not been reviewed first by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Mr. Richard was executed. ..more.. : by CHRISTY HOPPE
Most of the laws specify that registered offenders not live within a set distance from a school or a park where children congregate. In the case of California, it’s 2,000 feet. California law also specifies that when paroled, you have to live in the county of your last legal residence. Say your last legal residence was San Francisco. Too bad — no homes in the city are farther than 2,000 feet from a park or school. Parolees are getting around it by saying they are homeless, so they have no “address.” And, police say, that makes them harder to track, and not easier. In one Midwest city, paroled offenders were living in ratty motels on the outside of the town, because they couldn’t find housing outside the prescribed distance. Michigan is part of the typical 1,000-foot rule, where offenders can’t live, work or loiter within 1,000 feet of the “student safety zone” around school property. Which is troubling, because those on the sex registry are anything but “one size fits all.” ..more.. : by Kendall P. Stanley News-Review editor
Extrapolate those finding against the majority of cases without DNA evidence and it's hard not to conclude that innocents reside among the 375 men on Florida's Death Row. Mark Dean Schwab is not among them. Death-penalty opponents have suffered a heinous draw. The next killer up for lethal injection, 16 years after his crime shocked Florida, remains among the state's most despised, least sympathetic criminals. No doubts ever clouded this conviction. Six weeks after the convicted child-rapist was released from prison, Schwab kidnapped, raped and strangled an 11-year-old boy. The public outrage spawned state laws that lengthened prison terms for child-predators, tightened early-release programs and invoke ever more severe residential limitations for sex criminals. Sex offenders forced to live in their cars or under the Julia Tuttle Causeway can thank Mark Dean Schwab, in part, for their predicament. ..more.. : by FRED GRIMM
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