a public defender

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Glenarlow Wilson [previous coverage here and here] has rejected a plea offer from the State.

The Douglas County man imprisoned for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17, has turned down a plea deal a prosecutor offered in writing this week, his attorney said Friday.

B.J. Bernstein said Genarlow Wilson won’t accept the deal offered by Douglas County District Attorney David McDade because it would require him to plead guilty to a felony with a 15-year sentence and serve five years in prison.

Bernstein pointed out that a Monroe County judge granted her appeal this month, changed Wilson’s conviction to a misdemeanor and ordered him freed from prison. Attorney General Thurbert Baker, however, is appealing that judge’s ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Bernstein is also concerned that Wilson would be forced to register as a sex offender under the deal, despite McDade’s contention that he could plead to an offense that does not normally require registration.

The plea deal itself is a little ambiguous or mysterious, if you prefer:

McDade spelled out his plea deal in a letter to Bernstein’s co-counsel, Rodney Zell, Monday. In the letter, McDade offers to let Wilson plead to a felony “that reflects his criminal actions with the victim in this case.”

McDade, however, does not identify possible charges. But he says Wilson could plead guilty to an offense that does not normally require sex offender registration, which has been one of the main sticking points in the case.

A series of court decisions and legislative actions, however, make it unclear whether Wilson can avoid registering as a sex offender regardless of the plea deal, said Mark Jackson, director of legal services for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

McDade said his offer would also let Wilson get credit for the time he has already served in prison and that he would not oppose parole for him.

HT: Audacity

Technorati Tags: glenarlow wilson

Ruling on what has been a problematic requirement imposed by Departments of Correction throughout the country, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided Thursday that inmates cannot be threatened with additional jail time if they do not admit to their crimes during treatment. The opinion holds that it is a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination.

The court’s 5-2 decision overturned a 1999 ruling in which it found the opposite — that more prison time wasn’t enough to force an inmate to incriminate himself. The current case involved two inmates convicted of sex crimes — Frank Edward Johnson and John William Henderson.

Both refused to participate in sex offender treatment that would have required them to admit to sex offenses and discuss the incidents in detail. Johnson was appealing his conviction, while Henderson argued that he would open himself up to perjury charges if he admitted a crime he had denied during his trial and appeal.

Both men got 45 extra days in prison for not participating in the program.

Chief Justice Russell Anderson, writing for the majority, cited a 2002 opinion from then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor saying that the threat of more prison time could be enough to compel a person to reveal information that could lead to incarceration.

“Extension of the inmates’ incarceration time for their refusal to admit sexual offenses in sex offender treatment did rise to the level of compulsion for purposes of their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,” his opinion said.

It is a very interesting opinion that engages in a Marks analysis, which was being done in the blogosphere yesterday in the wake of SCOTUS’ school desegregation opinions. On the merits, the court holds:

We agree, and now hold that a convicted individual can claim the privilege against self-incrimination as long as a direct appeal of that conviction is pending, or as long as the time for direct appeal of that conviction has not expired. Because extension of incarceration constitutes compulsion, and because a direct appeal of Johnson’s conviction was pending when he refused to admit the crime of which he was convicted, we affirm the court of appeals’ holding that the Commissioner’s extension of Johnson’s incarceration by 45 days for his refusal to admit his crime in sex offender treatment violated his privilege against self-incrimination.

In order to determine whether the privilege against self-incrimination was available to Henderson, we must determine whether an admission by him could have been incriminating. Because Henderson testified at trial that he had no sexual contact with the victim, an admission to the contrary in the SOTP would have been incriminating, as it might have supported a conviction for perjury. It is well-established in federal courts that the privilege against self-incrimination can properly be invoked based on fear of a perjury prosecution arising out of conflict between statements sought to be compelled and prior sworn testimony. See, e.g., United States v. Lumpkin, 192 F.3d 280, 285-86 (2d Cir. 1999); United States v. Fortin, 685 F.2d 1297, 1298 (11th Cir. 1982). There is no reason the same principle would not be applicable here.

The opinion also contains a very thorough analysis of Fifth Amendment “self-incrimination” jurisprudence. In summary:

The Fifth Amendment does not prohibit all self-incriminating testimony; rather, it prohibits “only self-incrimination obtained by a ‘genuine compulsion of testimony.’” United States v. Washington, 431 U.S. 181, 187 (1977) (quoting Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U.S. 433, 440 (1974)). The compulsion element of the privilege against self-incrimination is present when the state attaches sufficiently adverse consequences to the choice to remain silent that a person is compelled to speak. “[W]hen a State compels testimony by threatening to inflict potent sanctions unless the constitutional privilege is surrendered, that testimony is obtained in violation of the Fifth Amendment * * * .” Lefkowitz v. Cunningham, 431 U.S. 801, 805 (1977). Penalty situations occur when “the assertion of the privilege is penalized so as to ‘foreclos[e] a free choice to remain silent, and * * * compe[l] * * * incriminating testimony.’” Murphy, 465 U.S. at 434 (quoting Garner v. United States, 424 U.S. 648, 661 (1976)). For example, threatening to revoke an individual’s probation for refusing to answer potentially incriminating questions would create a classic penalty situation. Id. at 435.

Just last week, we discussed this very issue (in the context of probation) here.

HT: SOI

So goes the headline of this Boston Globe story.

Nearly three years after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state could post the names, addresses, and photos of the most dangerous sex offenders on a public website, sex offenders released from prison now often end up in homeless shelters, where it is difficult to track them, and a range of potential victims sleep nearby.

In a recent review of 77 Level 3 sex offenders — the category the state uses to define those with a high risk of committing sex crimes again — who list addresses in Boston on the state’s online registry, the Globe found that 65 percent reported they were living at homeless shelters.

This problem is caused by several factors: legislation, perception and lack of supervision. It also brings problems of its own.

“This is a critical issue of grave concern,” said Jim Greene , director of the city’s Emergency Shelter Commission. “Large, crowded homeless shelters are a militantly anti therapeutic milieu for people with mental health or other behavior problems. They’re just not a place for a Level 3 sex offender to reintegrate into society.”He and other advocates for the homeless fault the state for more talk than action to keep sex offenders off the streets.

Greene pointed to an unrealized five-year-old plan the state Department of Correction provides to shelters and other agencies that house recently released prisoners. Former convicts deemed at risk of committing more crimes, it says, should have “risk reduction plans” that include applications for specialized housing, special workshops to help them get jobs and medical services; and supervision after their release.

But sex offenders released from prison often find themselves boxed out from housing. Charles McDonald , a spokesman for the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board, acknowledged the reentry centers are not able to help most sex offenders find housing. “Having a home to live in is extremely important for a sex offender to reintegrate,” McDonald said. “This is a problem that should be addressed on the grand scale.”

Absolutely. This is the problem with these harsh sex offender laws. We want to punish them, but do not want to deal with the very real consequences of the laws. Where, indeed, should they live? I don’t see any solutions being proposed and till then, this problem will continue to grow.

Technorati Tags: sex offenders, residency restrictions

Update: The State has appealed the grant of the habeas corpus petition. Several commenters (here and around the blogosphere) wonder why. The CNN article provides some clues:

In a written statement, Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker said he filed the appeal to resolve “clearly erroneous legal issues,” saying that while the judge did have the authority to grant habeas relief, he did not have the authority “to reduce or modify the judgment of the trial court.”

That’s exactly why I thought they were appealing (see comments below). I haven’t dealt with habeas trials where the claim raised was an 8th Amendment claim, so this particular remedy might be appropriate (maybe CDW has some input). However, in the context of your regular habeas petition claims, the remedy is usually to vacate the conviction and return the case to the trial docket. In the limited circumstance of breach of plea agreement (Santobello v. New York) claims, specific performance may be ordered by a court, but that clearly isn’t the case here.

In addition, I think the State doesn’t want to leave this opinion out there to serve as precedent for future habeas petitions.

Original: Glenarlow Wilson’s (previous coverage here) state petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus was granted today, on the grounds that his sentence was “cruel and unusual” (he was sentenced to 1o years and life-time sex offender registration). The Habeas judge instead imposed a sentence of 12 months to serve.

Judge Wilson agreed the 10-year prison sentence “would be viewed by society as ‘cruel and unusual’ in the Constitutional sense of disproportionality.”

“The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor… and will spend eight more years in prison is a grave miscarriage of justice,” Wilson wrote in his order, which was released this morning.

“If any case fits into the definitive limits of a miscarriage of justice, surely this case does.”

Wilson added, “If this court, or any court, cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish… Justice being served in a fair and equal matter.”

While Wilson should be released within 48 hours, it is more likely than not that the released will be stayed pending an appeal by the State.

SL&P has more here and here.

The Courant had this article over the weekend, chronicling the efforts across the state to deal with sex offenders after release.

The debate in Stafford was feisty and political.First Selectman Allen Bacchiochi, a Republican, had proposed an ordinance that would ban convicted sex offenders from public parks and recreation areas.

At the selectmen’s May 10 meeting, Democratic Selectman Gordon Frassinelli questioned the utility and deterrent value of the ban, likening the initial written warning and $100 fine on the second offense to an unshoveled sidewalk violation.

Bacchiochi snapped back, “Do you want to protect the children or do you want to protect the person who has already been a sex offender? I want to protect the children of this town.”

“I think that’s pretty universal,” Frassinelli replied in a quiet voice.

Stafford is the latest to wade into the debate, with the selectmen passing the ordinance, copied from one in Danbury, last month. Afterward, Bacchiochi immediately pulled it back for legal and enforcement review before sending it to a town meeting vote.

A state-wide bill to restrict sex offenders from living within 1000 feet of schools and child-care centers passed the House but didn’t come up for vote in the Senate. Connecticut has been slow to enter the fray, which has seen a rush of bills nationwide. This has actually been a good thing. As the debate has gathered steam, more data has become available and Connecticut has been able to see the effects of passing such laws.

If it saves even one child, it will be worth it, proponents say.But new research and treatment experts say it has a slim chance of doing even that.

“I know of no case where it’s saved a child from being molested,” said psychologist Dennis Gibeau, program director for the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior in Middletown. “The idea that we’re instituting laws that restrict where sex offenders can live, where they can frequent, doesn’t really address the issue of protecting children.”

Bridgeport is amending a proposal that would restrict sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of schools and child-care centers and prohibit them from parks unless accompanying their own children. Its sponsor, Councilman Keith Rodgerson, projects it will come before the common council again in July.

Rodgerson says there is more council and city support for the move since his research showed the unequal density of sex offenders in Bridgeport compared with Fairfield County towns and the state at large. Bridgeport has almost 16 offenders per square mile, while Danbury and the state as a whole have less than one.

“You walk out of your front door and you’re going to bump into one,” Rodgerson said.

Other cities in the State are dealing with the problem in the context of CT’s small size. New London considered a residency restriction ban, but it wasn’t pursued. The Mayor said it would have been hard to enforce.

No parent, politician or pundit could find fault with the intent of keeping children safe from sexual abuse. Of more than 600,000 registered sex offenders in the nation, Connecticut has almost 4,500.But can the recent laws, some of which virtually leave the convicted offender nowhere to go, work?

First of all, in 80 to 90 percent of sex offenses, the predator knows the victim, experts say. The stranger in the park case is rare.

Second, many of the ordinances, including the Danbury one, do not differentiate between child molesters and other offenders. The crimes of the 10 registered offenders in Stafford range from first-degree sexual assault to public indecency.

Third, the jury is still out on whether registering offenders or restricting their activities reduces the number of sex crimes.

“The general idea of limiting sex offenders in mixing with children certainly makes good common sense,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. Blumenthal supported the public safety legislation and has suggested more aggressive steps, such as electronic monitoring of serious offenders.

But a study released in April by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, tracing 224 repeat sex offenders, concluded that not one would have been deterred by a residency restriction law. Social proximity was the key factor, it found, with half of the offenders establishing contact with victims through friends or acquaintances. Only 35 percent of the offenders made direct contact with victims, and none of the juvenile cases involved contact near a school, park or other prohibited area.

At least the media is now taking note of the DOJ study that debunks the myth that sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism.

At the forefront of the debate is the presumption, once a child molester, always a child molester.A premise in the Danbury and Stafford ordinance states, “the recidivism rate for released sex offenders is alarmingly high, especially for those who commit their crimes on children.”

But a 2003 Bureau of Justice Statistics study followed 9,691 released sex offenders, 4,295 of them child molesters, in 15 states from 1994 to 1997. In that span, only 5.3 percent of the total group repeated sex crimes, and 3.3 percent of the child molesters were arrested for another sex crime against a child.

“The conventional wisdom is that they all go out and reoffend. I don’t think you’re going to find the data to support that,” said Charles Olney, research associate at the Center for Sex Offender Management in Maryland, a project for the U.S. Justice Department. “That 100 percent recidivism rate - I’ve only heard it in speeches.”

Dan Casagrande, the Danbury corporation counsel who helped draft the sex offender ordinance, pointed to an Indianapolis ordinance that was struck down in federal court as too restrictive. “It kept anyone on the registry from entering the city of Indianapolis. You can’t even be on the interstate,” he said.

Police in Georgia and Iowa have said the laws have seriously undermined efforts to keep track of offenders. “We’re going to see sex offenders who are unable to live in communities and they’re going to go further underground where they can’t be monitored,” Renee Redman, legal director of the ACLU Foundation of Connecticut, said.
It will be interesting to see how cities (and the state) react to growing data on residency restrictions and whether they attempt to shape bills in a meaningful way.

Here is my post on what acceptable registry and residency restriction laws would look like.

Update (6/6/07): Well, the Senate passed this travesty too, right before the end of the session (11:30pm, to be exact), without debate. It was placed on the darn consent calendar and passed unanimously. I guess it will be up to a court to decide the Constitutionality of this bit of legislation. Any thoughts out there on why it might be unconstitutional? It’s the same provision from the federal Adam Walsh Act.

Late last night, the CT House passed HB 7269 which contains the following new section:

Sec. 2. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2007) Notwithstanding section 54-86a of the general statutes, in any criminal proceeding, any property or material that constitutes child pornography shall remain in the care, custody and control of the state, and a court shall deny any request by the defendant to copy, photograph, duplicate or otherwise reproduce any property or material that constitutes child pornography so long as the attorney for the state makes the property or material reasonably available to the defendant.

Such property or material shall be deemed to be reasonably available to the defendant if the attorney for the state provides the defendant, the defendant’s attorney or any individual the defendant may seek to qualify to furnish expert testimony at trial, ample opportunity for inspection, viewing, and examination of the property or material at a state facility. For the purposes of this section, “child pornography” shall have the same meaning as in section 53a-193 of the general statutes.

This bill is intended to track a similar provision in the federal Adam Walsh Act. I’m not sure why the legislature would feel it necessary to create this section. What if the defense is that the materials in question are digitally created? How will a defense expert be able to verify the authenticity of the documents, deconstruct them and make copies for trial? I’ll be awaiting the transcripts of the debate on this one.

It now heads to the Senate (which thus far has not placed this bill on its calendar for today).

Connecticut may have made the first arrest nationwide of a sex offender posting on MySpace. After MySpace agreed to divulge the details of the users it had deleted recently, the information was received by Connecticut’s AG who shared it with law enforcement. That led them to Chris Montefusco.

Christopher Montefusco 30, of West Haven, was taken into custody Thursday by state Department of Correction officials. He was one of what is now believed to be more than 200 sex offenders in Connecticut using MySpace. He had registered two different profiles of himself on the site, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said.

Although Blumenthal had no details about Montefusco’s underlying criminal charge, he said that one of the conditions of Montefusco’s parole was that he not use a computer, the Internet or access social networking sites such as MySpace without first obtaining permission from his parole officer.

The news story notes that the AG is seeking permission from Montefusco to search his computer in order to determine who he was contacting.

In Connecticut, Blumenthal is pushing the legislature to approve a bill this year that would require sites like MySpace to verify users’ ages and require minors to get parental permission before they could post profiles. Blumenthal said that the networks could apply computer technology already used by credit card and tobacco companies to verify users’ ages. Sites that fail to comply would face civil penalties of up to $5,000 a day.

But officials from MySpace have questioned the effectiveness of age verification. Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, said that it could create more dangers for children by giving them a false sense of security if a predator manages to pass through the age-screen using bogus information.

Nigam and MySpace favor an alternate proposal - which Connecticut’s House of Representatives unanimously approved last week - requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and other Internet identifiers as well as their home addresses when they are released from prison.

Again, I question the reliability of either proposal. It isn’t that difficult to lie about your age and it is ridiculously easy to keep creating new e-mail addresses. Maybe computers should come with parenting guides.

Previous coverage:

• First MySpace purge casualty
• CT House passes bill requiring registration of e-mail addresses
• MySpace saga
• Sex offenders and MySpace: Free Speech and Due Process violations?

Yesterday the Senate passed SB 1458 [scroll down to the first full bill discussed], also called “Jessica’s Law”. I’ve blogged about this bill in the past and it really does provide for stiff penalties. It increases the mandatory minimum sentence for sexual assault of a minor under the age of thirteen to twenty five years.

This is also the bill that creates the “tender years” exception to hearsay. My thoughts on this are well documented. I do not like it and I don’t think I ever will.

Not all is bad, though. They amended the “Romeo and Juliet” law to increase the permissible age difference between participants to three years instead of two.

The sad thing is that the bill was based partly on incorrect information:

While the current trend among lawmakers is to move away from mandatory minimum prison terms, Kissel said this was one instance in which such enforcement is necessary. Research has shown that many sex offenders are prone to a pattern of behavior and could offend again if given the opportunity, [Senator] Kissel said.

No, not many. The latest studies show that sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rates. Also notable is the fact that law enforcement agencies have come out against high mandatory-minimums because it makes it difficult to prosecute. Defendants are less likely to accept plea deals and prosecutors have less flexibility in structuring an appropriate sentence.

Here’s another news article with a quote from a prosecutor:

Stephen Sedensky, the State’s Attorney for Danbury Superior Court, applauded lawmakers for taking steps to protect sexual assault victims.

“The legislature realizes the seriousness of these type of offenses and wants the sentences to reflect that,” he said.

He added that the 25-year mandatory minimum for the aggravated sexual assault charge could lead to fewer defendants taking a plea agreement and more cases going to trial.

“It’s too soon to tell whether that will be good for the victims,” he said, noting that the victims could be called upon to testify during a trial. “I’m anxious to see how it will play out in court.”

Well, time will tell how these statutes are utilized and whether they stand up to Constitutional muster.

Technorati Tags: sex offenders, mandatory minimums, connecticut legislation, tender years.

Prof. Berman points to this story out of Oregon (via Corrections Sentencing) which says that the state is considering employing chemical castration to prevent “high-risk” offenders from re-offending.

The state is close to approving a Corrections Department budget that includes money to expand the state’s chemical castration program. If passed, the state would pay for high-risk sex offenders to receive twice-monthly shots of Depo-Provera, a testosterone-reducing drug.

Depo-Provera, originally developed as a contraceptive for women, creates sexual apathy in men by reducing the level of testosterone. European countries have used the drug since the 1960s to treat sex offenders. It’s less popular in the U.S., and Oregon is one of fewer than 10 states reported to have chemical castration laws.

Prof. Berman asks whether chemical castration (if proven to work) should be employed (actually, why shouldn’t it be). As readers might guess, I am uneasy with this proposition. There are several assumptions here: That we know that “high-risk” offenders will re-offend; that all “high-risk” offenders will re-offend. This does dip into some “Minority Report” territory. I’m quite uneasy by the idea that we will assume that all high-risk offenders are going to re-offend and we need to stop that by subduing the sexual urge by reducing levels of testosterone.

Those are some mighty assumptions and I’m uncomfortable with that. There are (have to be) better alternatives to this. What if we have an offender that, despite being “high-risk” is rehabilitated and wishes to live a normal life? I see visions of Buck v. Bell.

Btw, here are resources for chemical castration and resources against chemical castration.

Tell me how I’m wrong.

Reader Ilah points to this story about how a family (with three young children) has accepted a released sex offender into their neighborhood [I guess SC has no residency restrictions].

“My husband and I discussed it before we even met Paul [Allan] that we will not go at it like everybody else goes at,” said Cheri Irvin. “We will not run from him out of fear.”So the family made a decision.

“I think the best thing that we can do for someone in this situation, is to accept them back into society with limitations.”

As a result, Paul Allan is now welcome in their home, but not alone with their children. He considers Cheri to be like his sister. This hasn’t stopped neighbors from unleashing their anger, though.

It can be a difficult commitment, because anger at Allen can be directed toward the Irvins.”I have some people that refuse to even be around me,” said Cheri Irvin. “And if any of my things are near them, it’s like, don’t touch them because they are friends.”

“We’ve had notes on our front door warning us he’s a sex offender and we need to stay away from him and all that,” said Joshua.

“It’s a feeling of rejection,” said Allan. “And hate, just pure hate for me.”

A letter was sent to the news station (which lead to the story), which alleged that he was “bothering children and handing out candy on Halloween” (which apparently is against the law). Turns out the kids were the Irvin’s.

This is the way to go. Reintegration into society has to be accompanied by inclusion, not rejection. Rejection, in my opinion, serves to only drive people further into their bad habits and we have re-offenders.

I’m glad to see stories like these, because it preserves my faith in humanity.

“Who me?
Yes you!
Couldn’t be!
Then who?”

goes the familiar poem. Except MySpace didn’t ask that last question. In fact, MySpace (after erroneously deleting a young woman’s profile), didn’t say much of anything to her. This is what I was afraid of.

In MySpace’s “search and removal” of sex offender profiles with the assistance of Sentinel, there was a legitimate concern that there would be incorrect matches and people who were not sex offenders would get caught in the net.

Jessica Davis experienced just that.

It took nearly a week for Jessica Davis to get an explanation about why MySpace had labeled her a sex offender and pulled her profile from the social networking Web site.And when her name was finally cleared, it wasn’t because of anything MySpace did.

In fact, the response she got from MySpace simply said:

Your profile has therefore been removed from MySpace.com. Please do not attempt to re-register on MySpace.com. Registered sex offenders are not allowed on MySpace.If you believe this designation was made in error, you may appeal your removal by writing to AccountSafe@myspace.com within 14 days. Please note that if you make a false appeal, MySpace may bring this to the attention of the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

So why did she get flagged? Well, there is a Jessica Dawn Davis who is a registered sex offender. Their birth dates are two days and two years apart and they live in (the entire State of) Florida at “roughly the same time”, according to Sentinel’s CEO. Awesome.

Let’s ignore the fact that they don’t really look anything alike. (See picture above - courtesy abcnews.com). As far as I can find, her profile hasn’t been restored and she has had to spend two weeks to clear her name. Guilty until proven innocent, indeed.

It really has become a saga. The internet is abuzz with it. First, eight attorneys general requested [pdf of request] that Myspace turn over the data it has collected via the Sentinel database of registered sex offenders on MySpace.Then, MySpace said that it had deleted sexual predator profiles.

The action comes a day after eight U.S. attorneys general demanded that the News Corp.-owned company hand over offenders’ names and addresses, and delete their profiles from among MySpace’s 175 million user base.”We’ve made it clear we have a zero tolerance policy against convicted sex offenders,” MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We’ve said numerous times that the goal was to delete them.”

Finally, MySpace refused to turn over the data to the attorneys general, saying that it was prohibited by Federal privacy laws from doing so, unless ordered to via subpoena or warrant.

Christian Genetski, an attorney who has represented MySpace, said the Electronic Communications Privacy Act requires subpoenas, court orders or search warrants, depending on the information sought.”It’s a clearly defined law that most providers and prosecutors understand and work with on a daily basis,” said Genetski, who covers information security and Internet enforcement at a firm in Washington, D.C. “My understanding is (the attorneys general) want the private personal information, and that’s clearly the information the ECPA protects.”

Okay. So you probably know all of this already. So what do I think of it? I think the AsG are barking up the wrong tree. Really, how difficult is it for anyone to create a profile on MySpace? It doesn’t require that you enter your actual real first name (and I doubt that they can require that anyway) or last name or your real age (if you lie about it, so what? They’ll boot you. Boohoo.) or where you live or anything. Try it. Set up a completely fictitious profile on MySpace. What’s that going to get them? How are they going to prove that it was indeed the sexual predators that set up these profiles? It may just serve to publicize the issue, which may not be a bad tactic if that the was the goal.

What bothers me is those that may have inadvertently been deleted during MySpace’s “purge” of sexual predators. Then you’re almost forced to provide your real information to exonerate yourself. That’s guilty until proven innocent.

Instead of hounding MySpace, hound parents. Yeah, those people whose jobs the State is being forced to do. Perhaps parents need a “how to protect your kids from the dangers of the internet” class. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t be an idiot and give out your personal information to strangers on the web. Don’t talk to strangers on the phone. Don’t agree to meet strangers alone. Yada, yada, yada.

In loco parentis no more.

For additional coverage, see SOI, Windypundit, SexCrimes and my previous post.

Edit: So, in hindsight, maybe my tone was a little harsh toward parents. My point still remains, though. Greater control at home means less problems on the internet.

Two New Jersey legislative proposals in the past few days caught my eye: one good, one bad. In the plus column is New Jersey’s bill to abolish the death penalty, which was voted out of the Judiciary Committee (8-2) and now heads to the full Assembly for a vote.

If also passed by the Assembly and signed by Gov. Jon Corzine, who opposes capital punishment, it would make New Jersey the first state to legislatively abolish capital punishment since 1976. That was the year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the first revised death penalty laws after striking them down nationwide four years earlier.

“That would be historic,” said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), said passing it would “give New Jersey an opportunity to lead the nation by recognizing the death penalty has no reason to exist.”

“The death penalty cannot be fixed,” Lesniak said. “The time has come to abolish it.”

Full audio of the judiciary committee hearing is available here. Click on listen and then skip to around 51 minutes in.

HT: CDW

On the other hand, Lyndhurst, NJ has this asinine proposal:

Lyndhurst is gathering feedback on a proposal to require background and fingerprint checks of all ice-cream truck and other food-on-wheels vendors as a way to protect children. ‘Most of the people who come to an ice-cream truck are kids,’ says Mayor Richard DiLascio. ‘A parent might not always be around.’ Volunteer coaches and teachers must already submit to such checks.

This is nothing but fear mongering. As Mark Bennett rightly points out, only 7% of all reported sexual assaults against minors are carried out by strangers. He also has an interesting proposal to reduce child sexual assault.

Yes, that is a “Jersey Ice Cream ” ice cream truck in the picture.

Here’s something to make you chuckle this Sunday morning:

On April 5, 1996, this Court ordered Plaintiff to show cause why this Court should not impose Rule 11 sanctions upon him for filing a motion for improper purposes. The motion which Plaintiff filed was entitled “Motion to Kiss My Ass” (Doc. 107) in which he moved “all Americans at large and one corrupt Judge Smith [to] kiss my got [sic] damn ass sorry mother f[...] you.”

Washington v. Alaimo, 934 F. Supp. 1395 (1996). Awesome

Today’s Sunday Globe Magazine has a wonderfully insightful and detailed article on residency restrictions and their effectiveness.

The residency laws bring up serious civil liberties concerns, including that these measures apply to convicts after they have been punished and released and served their parole, and that in many cases, homeowners are exempt while renters may be required to move. And then there’s the fact that this type of post-release regulation doesn’t exist for other criminal classes: We don’t prohibit arsonists from living near gas stations.

But a less-discussed argument against the laws is that they don’t actually work to prevent sex crimes against children. Studies have shown, for example, that the majority of these crimes are perpetrated by family members or acquaintances, that many sex crimes are never reported, and that sex offenders often molest outside the area where they live. Some scholars go so far as to say that the measures could put children in greater danger, not less – because the sex offenders go underground, because therapy works to prevent re-offense, and because limited resources are wasted enforcing the laws. “There is no evidence that residency restrictions work, and there are some pretty good arguments why they are not likely to be effective,” says David Finkelhor, the director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. “No one who has any real professional experience in the management of sex offenders thinks these laws make much sense.”

The article traces the history of Megan’s Laws and the recent residency restriction laws, has quotes from legislators, LEO, parents, offenders, psychiatrists and professors, and cites the recent Bureau of Justice Statistics. It attempts to dispel some of the myths surrounding these laws.

The public also needs to know that children are getting safer. According to the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services, sex crimes of all kinds have dropped substantially since the mid-1990s, after increasing between 1977 and 1991. Between 1991 and 2005, the most recent year for which data are available, substantiated sexual abuse cases dropped by 51 percent. The decline, says David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, is due to the increased incarceration of sex offenders, more intervention and prevention efforts, and better mental health treatment, including more widespread use of antidepressants and other psychiatric medicines. Residency restrictions didn’t do a thing to help.

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