Featured Issue: Posted 2-9-2005
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The Maine Quandary: Children, Residences of Sex Offenders and Former Sex Offenders, and the Current Shortage of Any Police Force in 75% of the Communities in the State!
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2-6-2005 Maine:
Bills target sex offenders
.A pair of proposals in the Legislature would prohibit registered sex offenders from living in towns without police or within 1,000 feet of children. The bills -- up for public comment Monday -- were written in response to controversial incidents over the past year involving convicted sex offenders.
Issue-1: Rep. Michael Vaughan, R-Durham wants legislators to prohibit registered sex offenders from moving to any town without a law enforcement agency that could respond to a complaint within five minutes. He said he drew up the bill in response to a Durham incident last year, when a convicted three-time sex offender assaulted a man after being threatened for talking to the man's wife.
The incident occurred just two days after Androscoggin County sheriff's deputies told residents that Ronald Leno, who had lived in Maine for more than two years at the time, was convicted of sex crimes in Massachusetts and Hawaii in 1978 and 1980. Durham has no police department. Vaughan said without a police department or sheriff's office nearby, a town cannot effectively protect the public from registered sex offenders -- and vice versa.
"Just like there's no police for us, there's also no police to protect him," he said, adding that one resident said she would shoot Leno if she saw him on her property.
Issue-2: Rep. Robert Berube, R-Lisbon, said he is asking the Legislature to prohibit sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, a licensed day-care facility, a playground, or any child's residence. Berube said the bill is a response to an incident in his town in which a registered sex offenders relocated across the street from a day-care center. Residents of Lisbon were alarmed by the development, formed a neighborhood association and pushed for the legislation, he said.
: by ELBERT AULL, Staff Writer
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2-8-2005 Maine:
Stricter sex-offender rules sought
.Sex offenders fell under the scrutiny of the Legislature's Criminal Justice Committee on Monday when the panel devoted most of its workday to a handful of bills designed to make life tougher for those convicted of sex crimes.
Force convicted sex offenders to only reside in communities with organized police departments or that contract services with a sheriff's department, -AND- prohibit sex offenders from residing within 1,000 feet of any child, school, daycare center or playground. ... Remarks were passionate from both those for and against some of the bills.
But Rep. Pat Blanchette, a Bangor Democrat serving as the panel's House chairwoman, may have spoken for many of the lawmakers on the committee when she observed that the Maine Legislature can't trump the U.S. Constitution.
"These residency issues go so far over the line," she said. "I don't care what their criminal record is. If they've served their time and they're out of prison, you have to put that aside. They're still residents of the United States of America and they have a right to live where they want. ... No bills can serve as a substitute for parental responsibility. Do not leave your 13-year-old or 14-year-old child unattended at home. It only takes a sexual predator a matter of minutes to move in."
Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, speaking in favor of the legislation barring offenders from living anywhere near children, Nutting said current law gives too much discretion to local police departments, which are required to notify local residents "as they deem appropriate to ensure public safety." "This is not enough," Nutting said. "One local community recently had a convicted sex offenders living there, next to children, without anyone having any knowledge of it until there was a problem."
Sen. Lois Snowe-Mello, R-Poland, would prefer all sex offenders be forced to live in cities and towns with organized police forces that are trained to deal with sex criminals. She said her constituents who live in communities without police departments feel ill-equipped to deal with sex offenders. "(For example) the folks in Durham feel extremely vulnerable and fear for the safety of their children when they consider the presence of a convicted sex offender living in their town," she said.
Doug Pappa, a convicted sex offender living in Augusta, likened two of the bills to laws that would have been perfectly at home "in Nazi Germany." Meanwhile, Richard Thompson of the Maine Civil Liberties Union said there was "no rational basis" for forcing sex offenders to live in certain communities and not others.
: by A. J. HIGGINS, OF THE NEWS STAFF
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2-8-2005 Maine:
Sex offender bills face opposition
.Two bills in the Legislature that would limit where convicted sex offenders can live drew fire during a public hearing Monday, as critics suggested that both measures are well-intentioned but misguided. One proposal would prohibit registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, a day-care center, a playground or the home of a child. The other bill would prohibit registered sex offenders from living in any community that does not have its own police department "or other law-enforcement agency that is capable of responding to any call within five minutes."
Supporters of the two bills said they are designed to protect Mainers from predators and ensure that sex offenders live only in those communities that are equipped to deal with them. But critics, including both chairmen of the legislative committee that is considering the bills, said they would be bad for the state as a whole because they would pit urban areas against rural areas.
"They don't make sense," said Sen. William Diamond, D-Windham, after the hearing by the Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, which he co-chairs.
Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, who supports the bill to prevent registered sex offenders from living near schools, day-care centers, playgrounds and children's homes, said it is a good idea because "our children should feel safe in their surroundings."
Critics countered that it would be impossible to enforce a law prohibiting registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of any child's home. Gerald Clark, a registered sex offender from Belfast, said it is impractical for any agency to keep an inventory of every home housing a child. Detective Mark Gilliam of the Topsham Police Department agreed, although both men joined other supporters in endorsing the rest of the bill.
Even if children's homes are stripped from the bill, opponents said, keeping sex offenders more than 1,000 feet from schools, playgrounds and day-care centers would force many of them to move from the state's cities into rural areas, in search of legal housing. "That is an issue for people (in the Legislature) who represent rural areas," Diamond said during the hearing.
Rep. Michael Vaughan, R- Durham, who sponsored the other bill, said forcing sex offenders to live in communities that have their own police departments or quick access to other law enforcement, such as sheriff's deputies, would allow Maine's small towns to maintain their quality of life "without having to resort to a siege mentality."
Kate Dufour of the Maine Municipal Association, said, that only 126 of Maine's 492 communities have their own police departments or other regular police coverage, and the bill "would place an unwelcome and unacceptable burden" on those communities. Democratic Rep. Patricia Blanchette of Bangor, who co-chairs the committee with Diamond, agreed with Dufour, saying Vaughan's bill would force the larger communities in Maine "to take responsibility for all of these dangerous predators so you won't have to do that" in the small towns.
: by PAUL CARRIER, Portland Press Herald Writer
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The Maine battle lines between perception and reality have been drawn! Their Legislature is attempting to resolve issues without considering the Divisions of Sex Offenders!
When crafting legislation it is critical to distinguish between registered / convicted sex offenders -AND- sex offenders, the difference being the former has been judged, served his/her sentence and legislatively permitted to return to society. The substantive due process lines are easily crossed when this distinction is not recognized. A review of our highlighting, in the news articles, will show they are co-mingled in the minds of the speakers. This usually results in poor legislation.
US Constitution: No state ... shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. While 'liberty and property' has never been defined with exactness, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been stated. "Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom ..., but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, to establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his/her own conscience, and generally enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Slaughter-House Cases..."
The fundamental right to establish a home includes the right to live in the home without undue governmental interference, and especially the right not to be forced to move from it, again and again and again, at the whim of whoever establishes a school, day care, a playground or family who wishes to have a child.
Public Safety:
Protecting registered sex offenders from society, -- and vice versa, seems a minor issue when 75% of Maine's communities already lack any police department or coverage. General public safety seems to be priority, that should be addressed way before any concerns related to registered sex offenders. See "Kate Dufour of the Maine Municipal Association, said, that only 126 of Maine's 492 communities have their own police departments or other regular police coverage, ..." What do these communities do in an emergency, or when a crime occurs, today? Given that circumstance, having local police administer any residency law whatsoever, is impossible.
Further, a review of the Ronald Leno case cited by Rep. Michael Vaughan, R-Durham will show that, Ronald Leno was clearly provoked on his own property, and although he went too far, the law did nothing to Paul Pugliese. Speaking to a person (Pugliese's wife) in a neighborly way is a far cry from attacking them.
FACT:.Of the 9,691 sex offenders released from prison in 15 states, OVERALL 3.5% (339 in these 15 states) were re-convicted of another sex offense within 3-years of release. The 9,691 offenders represented two-thirds of all sex offenders released nationwide that year.
Source: US Dep't of Justice, "Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994." Pub: 11/2003. These statistics were released after the Alaska: Smith et al. v. Doe et al. -and- Connecticut Dep't of Public Safety et al. v. DOE cases on registries, that did reach the US Supreme court.
Residency Laws:
Laws of illusion, to craft law which prohibit persons from living in an area, but allows them to travel to, pass through, or assemble there, signals flawed logic, it simply makes no sense, unless the goal is further punishment. Further, to totally prohibit persons from these proscribed areas, especially when many of life's necessary services are found only in these areas, and which these people need, creates the substantive questions which courts regularly hold as unconstitutional.
Residency laws follow this overbroad belief, that it is a good idea to keep sex offenders away from children. The belief fails to recognize the "Divisions of Offenders," and that, state registries fail to identify "Victims," as to child or adult. While the belief is laudable and makes for a great political platform, in society today it is impossible, truly impossible.
One division of offenders, registered sex offender was permitted to return to society, to now prohibit them from -forever being in the xx foot presence of a child- which was not part of their sentence, screams a constitutional ex post facto violation. It cannot be forgotten that many may marry and have children, or marry into a family, will these children also be removed from them; another constitutional violation!
The residency law premise is, that sex offenders will commit their crimes within their homes, as one -non typical- offender did, the truth of sex offenses is, that victims know their offender and that the offense is committed in the victim's home or a place that the victim frequents (by a trusted person in their lives). Further, over 95% of the new sex offenses, the offender has never committed a sex offense before, which means the offender is not likely to be a registered sex offender. Therefore, residency legislation cannot be effective because its' eye is on the wrong person.
Some states currently have residency laws pertaining to those on parole or probation, and the residency restrictions disappear when supervision is over. The basic illusion still exists under supervision, because it fails to recognize those who are off-supervision living in the same areas as those on supervision. The laws effectiveness is zero!
Problems abound with administering such laws, the first and foremost is, registered sex offenders cannot identify the majority of these proscribed areas. There are no lines painted nor fences constructed to advise of the proscribed areas. The measurements between an "offender's residence" and the "proscribed property," are exacting under the law (1,000 feet does not mean 999.99 feet) and it is impossible to judge, given property line measurements require a surveyor; unreasonable to require anyone to do that. Then there is the question of, straight line measuring, as the crow flies, or one can walk, or drive on the streets.
U.S. Supreme Court:
In 2003 the high court did say, states could make public a list of formerly convicted sex offenders and their addresses, and that these persons were not considered dangerous because no risk assessment had been done. However, the high court held that because it knew, the state of Connecticut would be performing risk assessments where offenders would be permitted to contest issues, Connecticut being a state where risk assessments are performed.
The high court did not hold that, anything beyond -a list of offenses and addresses- was permissible and constitutional. Residency laws, and many other laws that flow from sex offender registration, have never been held constitutional or even permissible by the high court as these issues have never reached that court.
It is well settled in the US Supreme court, that, legislation must be narrowly tailored to achieve the significant governmental interest! For that to have meaning, the interest cannot be based upon an illusion. Residency legislation, although well intentioned, is intended to target sex offenders, and because they cannot be readily identified, cannot be redirected to registered sex offenders simply because they can be identified. These illusionary laws are overbroad and encroach upon other fundamental constitutional rights of registered sex offenders and their families.
eAdvocate (Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved)
EARLIER STORY 6-17-2004 Maine:
Convicted sex offender held on assault charges
.LEWISTON, Maine — A convicted sex offender accused of attacking a man with a steel pipe remained in jail Wednesday as investigators pieced together events that led to his arrest. ... A judge ordered him to stay away from Paul Pugliese, the man he´s accused of attacking, as well as Pugliese´s family.
Pugliese said events unfolded after a man he later learned was Leno approached his wife in their garden Saturday afternoon, two days after police notified Durham residents that Leno was a convicted sex offenders. At the time, Pugliese´s wife described the man as "just chatty." Later, his wife and daughter realized who their visitor was. "We all were very upset. My wife said it was freaky, and she felt sick," Pugliese wrote in a sworn statement.
Pugliese said he gave his wife a loaded gun and "told her to use it if she had to" before paying a visit to Leno´s home. He said he pulled his truck halfway up Leno´s driveway. "I told him to ´stay away from my wife, family or you will pay the price,´" Pugliese stated. He said Leno replied, "I guess you know I´m a sexual offender, but that was 20 years ago." Pugliese said the confrontation continued and Leon asked if he wanted to "settle it right there."
Pugliese said he backed out of the driveway and onto the street, where Leno spit a banana in his face and hit Pugliese´s truck with a club, then opened the door to strike Pugliese. Leno has lived in Maine for more than two years, his attorney Howard O´Brien said. O´Brien said his client had "no problems until the sheriff´s department decided to make this a media case."
: by Maine News, Associated Press
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