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Columbus Day edition!

• From the Columbus Dispatch: Challenges to residency restrictions and “sex offender ghettos”.
• Mark Bennett has a copy of Phil Russell’s plea agreement.
• Robert Guest takes an in-depth look at written plea agreements and what you have to agree to give up.
• CDW discusses Catholics usually being disqualified from sitting on death juries and whether SCOTUS will look at that.
• Malum In Se is a victim of being dressed like a pd.
• The Windypundit concludes his “Evil Lawmaking” series with this post on the granddaddy of ‘em all: DUI.
• Scott is not happy with “corporate apologists”.
• Protesters at a Columbus Day parade in Denver are arrested.

 (click on image for full size)

In my post last night about Danbury’s desire to expel all sex offenders from its shelter, a helpful readers points to this NYT article about a homeless sex offender in Georgia who could be facing life in prison for failing to register.

The offender, Larry W. Moore Jr. of Augusta, was convicted in North Carolina in 1994 of indecent liberty with a child, a felony. This week he was convicted for the second time of violating a requirement that he register. Under the new law, a second violation carries an automatic life sentence.

“We have suggested that it is cruel and unusual punishment as it relates to the facts of this case,” said Sam B. Sibley Jr., the state public defender in Augusta, whose office represents Mr. Moore and is planning an appeal on his behalf.

This increased penalty is in conjunction with some tough residency restrictions: 1,000 feet of not only schools and day care centers but also churches, swimming pools and school bus stops.

There is only one shelter in Georgia that accepts male sex offenders. One. Sex offenders that cannot find housing have to resort to all sorts of living accommodations.

In Florida, the state authorized five offenders to live under a bridge in Miami after they were unable to find suitable housing that they could afford. In Iowa, a victims’ group found that offenders tried to comply with the registry law by offering addresses like “rest area mile marker 149” or “RV in old Kmart parking lot.”

I had a client once who was charged with failure to register. He was living under a bridge. I half-joked at the time that he should send in the registration form with “Under Charter Oak Bridge” as his address. Guess some people are actually doing it.

Then you get quotes like this:

Homelessness is not an acceptable excuse. “One of the requirements when you become a sex offender is you have to have an address,” said Sgt. Ray Hardin of the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office in Augusta.

Sergeant Hardin said enforcement of the law required a dedicated investigator, a global positioning system and, each time an offender moves, hours of paperwork. At least 15 sex offenders have been arrested because of homelessness since the law took effect in July 2006, according to documents gathered through pretrial proceedings in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Perhaps the police department can set up tents in their parking lots, where sex offenders can stay. This way, there’s zero cost of monitoring and these folks (some of them are human, too) have a roof over their heads.

Image license here

Here are some stories from last week to make this Monday morning more palatable:

• Southern Crim Law has compiled advice to new criminal defense attorneys from several bloggers in the form of responses to questions every newbie might have.
• In Florida, sex offender status will be listed on licenses.
• May it please the Court, Scott at Simple Justice doesn’t like old lawyer phrases.
• Mark Bennett has written up some legal first aid cheat sheets and one Motion to Change the Facts.
• EyeID writes about North Carolina’s new lineup ID rules.
• SL & P has a collection of stories questioning sex offender residency restrictions in Ohio and Kentucky.
• Norm Pattis writes about a recent CT Supreme Court opinion, which changes the language for a reasonable doubt instruction.
• The Lonely Abolitionist is back.
• Federal judges in California are considering imposing a cap on the number of inmates in California.

Enjoy!

This [pdf] is a map of Tippecanoe County, IN, where “John Doe” is asking to be found not to be a sex offender anymore and also challenging the legality of residency restrictions [previous coverage here].

I know next to nothing about the geography of Indiana and even less about Tippecanoe County, but doesn’t it look like most of the inhabitable urban area of the county is covered by the restrictions?

A judge in Kentucky has ruled that residency restrictions cannot be applied to sex offenders that were convicted before the law went into effect.

Jefferson District Judge Donald Armstrong Jr. dismissed the cases of three Louisville men charged with living too close to schools and a youth treatment center, ruling that the law is unconstitutional because it adds punishment to their initial convictions.But Michael Goodwin, an attorney for one of the men, said Armstrong “has recognized that when an individual is punished by a judge and jury, the legislators can’t, many years later, adopt a second punishment for the same person.”

This was a Superior Court decision (Supreme Court for you New Yorkers), so this isn’t the end. In fact, a different Superior Court judge ruled that the restrictions were constitutional. KY’s Supreme Court will have to decide this sooner or later.

Under the old law, offenders had to live at least 1,000 feet — a fifth of a mile — from locations including a school building or licensed day-care center. The new law measures the 1,000-foot distance from the property line.The new law applies to all offenders, even if they are no longer on probation or parole, or under any type of judicial supervision.

The Jumpstart is back after a one-week hiatus for reasons unknown. Take these with your morning coffee:

• The big story for the next two days will be the impending execution of Troy Davis, who might just be actually innocent. CDW has been doing a wonderful job of collection information and educating us about Davis. I will have a full post on Davis later and I will be tracking the execution deadline.
• CDW’s weekly roundup is also available.
• This week’s Blawg Review is hosted by Jamie Spencer and focuses on Criminal Law.
• EyeID also has coverage of Troy Davis.
• Mark Bennett is creating a list of all bloggers in the “Practical Blogosphere”.
• Scott at Simple Justice discusses the PD vs. CJA study, providing his own insight based on his experience and has this fantastic post entitled “A Primer on Sentencing”.
• Prof. Berman informs us that the Senate has scheduled a hearing on the border agents case.
• SexCrimes links to a study on Static99 - a diagnostic tool for predicting sex offender recidivism.

Here are some of my posts from last week, in case you missed them:

• Appellate Court overturns sex offender treatment as condition of probation
• Public defender study
• Testilying in traffic court
• New Chief State’s Attorney for Hartford appointed: Impact on death penalty?
• “Banned words” trial starts/ends (?) with mistrial
• Indiana challenge to residency restrictions
• Is failure to register a continuing offense? Part II
• Gate pay for inmates a reality
• Choosing an attorney
• Being John Q. Prosecutor

Heh - looks like a mini crim law blawg review! Enjoy

After residency restrictions went into effect in Tippecanoe County, 28 sex offenders have been asked to move their homes. One of them, John Doe, is saying no. John Doe was convicted in 1988 and released from jail in 1992. Since then, he has no arrests. He has lived at his current address for 7 years. However, new legislation is forcing him to relocate.

Legislation took effect July 1, 2006, that prohibits those offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school, public park or youth program center.

Wording of the law does not make it clear whether it applies to offenders convicted before that date.

But the Tippecanoe County prosecutor’s office is enforcing it as applying to any such offender in the Indiana Sheriff’s Sex and Violent Offender Registry.

John Doe is taking advantage of an IN law that permits sex offenders who are 10 years removed from their release to petition a court to be no longer considered a sex offender.

Here [pdf]are the motions and petitions he filed in court, which include the petition to no longer be considered a sex offender, a Motion for Preliminary Injunction and a Motion for Permanent Injunction.

The legislation is challenged on ex-post facto, takings clause and double jeopardy grounds.

photo courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mysticchildz/540087127/ , license info: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The New Haven Independent has this piece on some legislation discussed during the recently concluded legislative session. Notable among the bills mentioned was one to eliminate the offense of “sale within 1500 feet of a school zone”.

Another bill People Against Injustice and other grassroots groups around the state supported would have removed 1,500-foot “drug-free zones” around schools, day care centers and public housing. Those arrested on drug charges in such zones receive mandated longer prison sentences; the zones cover practically entire cities around the state.

I missed this - maybe it was just a proposal and not an actual bill - but this absolutely needs to be done. Connecticut is a very small state to begin with and in cities like New Haven and Hartford, it is almost impossible to be somewhere that is not within 1500 feet of a school. For example:

One reform group estimated that the only part of New Haven exempt from coverage under this law is the Yale golf course.

I guess the purpose of the bill was to prevent people selling to school kids, but all it does in reality is penalize those that live and sell within a city. Almost none of the defendants arrested and charged with sale within 1500 are arrested for selling to children.

It’s not like sale of drugs isn’t an offense. It is. Heavily punishable in this state. Sale w/1500 feet is usually tacked on to threaten defendants into taking plea deals that are significantly higher than if there were no charge of sale w/1500 feet. For a normal sale, you can get up to 15 years for a first offense and 30 for a second offense. If you’re not drug-dependent, however, you can get up to life in prison

Good to see then, that Judiciary Committee co-chair Mike Lawlor recognizes this problem:

Lawlor called the 1,500-foot law is a result of the law of unintended consequences. “That law was supposed to address people who sell drugs to kids and near schools. In practice it’s the same penalty no matter where you are so you might as well sell to kids right outside school. It’s an example of how drug laws create racial disparities - I don’t think it was intended - but if you get caught possessing drugs in an urban area the penalties are more severe than if you’re caught in a suburban or rural area. I don’t think there’s an agenda. Legislators just don’t like lowering penalties.” He supported the change, however.

And he’s right. It does discriminate; just like the differing penalties for crack and cocaine discriminate.

Take a look at the map above. It is a map from the New Haven Police Department that they use to chart the “buffer zones”. It is pretty obvious that the whole city is covered. The red squares are Public, Private, Charter, and Head Start Schools. the blue squares are New Haven Housing Authority Projects and the green dots are Daycare Centers (More than 12 children). [The map is part of this 2001 OLR Research Report.]

I mentioned this problem of distance restrictions in the context of residency restrictions for sex offenders a few months ago and I hope that if and when a residency restriction bill is proposed again, Rep. Lawlor keeps in mind that it would create the same problems. By the quote above, if a residency restriction bill were passed, no sex offender could live in the city of New Haven. That’s a problem.

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

So, as promised, here is the post on what happened to all those criminal law related bills that were voted out of committee.

The ones that became law:

• HB 7313 An Act Concerning Domestic Violence.
• SB 1458 An Act Concerning Jessica’s Law.
• SB 0170 An Act Concerning Pardons.

The ones that died, only to fight another day:

• HB 5503 An Act Concerning Residency Restrictions for Registered Sexual Offenders
• HB 6285 An Act Concerning The Age of a Child with Respect to Juvenile Court Jurisdiction
• HB 7085 An Act Concerning the SOL for Prosecution of Certain Sexual Assault Offenses Using DNA Evidence.
• HB 7234 An Act Concerning Victim Services.
• HB 7335 An Act Concerning Persistent Offenders.
• HB 7365 An Act Concerning the Procedure in a Capital Felony Trial.
• HB 7391 An Act Concerning Preventive Detention.
• HB 7406 An Act Concerning Youthful Offenders…
• HB 7408 An Act Concerning the Risk Assessment Board…
• SB 0708 An Act Creating a Violent Offender Registry.
• SB 0838 An Act Requiring the DNA Testing of Certain Arrested Persons.
• SB 1269 An Act Concerning the Quality of Legal Representation of Children and Youth in Juvenile Matters.
• SB 1322 Student Loan Repayment Assistance Bill for Public Defenders and Prosecutors.
• SB 1479 An Act Concerning Judicial Branch Openness.

Note that some of the proposals in these bills may have been merged with others (although I’m not aware of any). The Judicial Branch’s Law Library is keeping a running tally of all the bills that have become law. I’ll keep checking and updating this list as necessary. (HT: CT Practice Blog)

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.

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.

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.

Technorati Tags: sex offenders, residency restrictions

Iowa was supposed to be on the forefront of the “revisit residency restrictions” movement. Iowa was supposed to be the vanguard of the sensible restrictions movement. Iowa was supposed to show the rest of the country that these draconian laws don’t work and here’s how to do it.

Unfortunately, not so fast. It seems that - as all hot button political issues go - this has become politicized and stuck in a quagmire (For those keeping track, that’s two sitcom references).

Iowa sheriffs and prosecutors on Monday blasted lawmakers for failing to roll back a controversial and politically charged law restricting where sex offenders can live.

“They’re just afraid to take action, and the people of Iowa should be ashamed,” said Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald. “It’s absolutely politics at its worst.”

Earlier this year, the bipartisan panel heard during a series of public meetings from a number of groups - sex offender experts, statewide law enforcement associations, prevention experts and victims - who uniformly criticized the state law banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or child care centers.

However, those on the other side of the aisle are firm in their belief that this is not what the residents of Iowa want.

But Senate Minority Leader Mary Lundby of Marion said Republicans would resist any attempt to repeal the 2,000-foot law, which went into effect in 2005. Lundby said her belief is that people do not support such a move.

“My message hasn’t changed since the beginning of the session,” she said. “We will support additional spending for monitoring (sex offenders) and additional assessment, but people across the aisle don’t want them in their neighborhoods, period.”

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out - with the end of session on Friday.

See also: SexCrimes and Corrections Sentencing

Previous coverage:

• Iowa I
• Iowa II
• Iowa III
• Iowa statement

*My sincerest apologies to those that had repressed any memory of that song and that show.

Maine legislators will begin to review several sex offender bills, including the constitutionality of residency restrictions, when session begins next week. Among the highlights:

• New crime of loitering in a child safe zone
• Tiered risk assessment
• Constitutionality of residency restrictions

Glad to see that more legislatures are beginning to pick up on the fact that these measures don’t really do anything.

Update: While I’m on the subject, here’s another opinion piece coming out against residency restrictions (thanks to Ilah).

No research has evaluated the impact of residency restrictions on recidivism. An Arizona study found child molesters were more likely than rapists to live near schools. The Arizona study did not explore recidivism, however, or other factors affecting sex offenders’ housing choices. No link between residency restrictions and sexual recidivism has been established. Colorado and Minnesota studied this issue prior to enacting residency restriction laws. Researchers found that such laws were not a strategy for preventing sex crimes but found individualized restrictions may be appropriate.

No viable research examines the efficacy of residence restrictions. Research does identify unintended consequences. According to a Florida study involving sex offenders on probation, one quarter reported relocating because of the state’s law. Nearly half reported they could not reside with family. Fifty-seven percent reported less available affordable housing, leading to isolation and stress.

In conclusion he writes:

Residency restrictions disrupt offender stability and often isolate sex offenders from their support systems. While isolation from family is often initially appropriate for family safety, this should be based on risk assessments rather than all encompassing laws. Residency restrictions remove offenders from employment and public transportation, creating financial stress, a dynamic risk factor associated with reoffense. Stable employment and housing are essential for offenders to successfully transition into the community.

Technorati Tags: sex offenders, residency restrictions