General Comments June 2015

DOE V PORITZ Part 2: “A new and alien approach to American law, and the scope of government power… to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to pull the Country, and public opinion into the “correct” paths, in spite of Constitutional ” impediments”…( Sense Offences, August, 2009).

To start, typing verbatim on just the very first part to make clear what their scheme was. As I did on the previous, will CAPITALIZE their words for emphasis.

OPINION, written by Chief Justice Wilentz.
“Section 1, LEGISLATIVE PURPOSE: Addressing the problem of repetitive sex offenders.
“The essence of our decision is that the Constitution does NOT PREVENT our society from attempting to protect itself from convicted sex offenders NO MATTER WHEN CONVICTED, so long as the means of protection are REASONABLY designed for that purpose..and not designed to punish;

“that the community notification provided for in these laws gives it’s remedial purpose, rationality, and limited scope; further assured by our opinion and judicial review, is NOT Constitutionally vulnerable because of it’s inevitable impact on sex offenders’ LOSS OF ANONYMITY is NO Constititutional bar to society’s attempt at self defense.”

Mark I applaud you for doing something to try to overturn these laws and god speed to you. I am not a religious man but I beleive that good always prevails over evil. Anyway if I can assist you in anyway email me at mllkeys20112011@gmail.com . Here is a motion with the issues I beleive need to be brought forth hopefully you can use some of the info or bring fortb the issues in your brief. Let me know if this helps I spent a lot of time to compile this info. Good luck.

I the plaintiff_______________________ do hereby bring forth this motion for Declaratory and/or Injunction relief. This motion is being brought forth as a as applied challenge to the constitutionality of the sex offender registration and notification laws or Megans law as applied to me.

Introduction.

I am a non-violent, non-contact first time ex-offender from a incident that occurred over a decade ago. There was never any physical contact between myself and any victim. I completed my prison sentence and parole supervision without any incidents or violations despite all the obstacles and conditions of parole that were placed on me because of the sex offender designation. I have been arrest free and a completely law abiding citizen since my release. I do not pose any risk to the public. I was already severely punished for my offense and have been subjected to intensive monitoring and supervision while on parole. I should not be subjected to these registration and notification laws that involve consequences that are severely detrimental to so many aspects of my life.

Governments have an obligation to protect people and take appropriate steps to safeguard the lives of those within its jurisdiction to protect them from violence. One element of that duty is to take measures to deter and prevent crime. They must do so, however, within a human rights framework, which places restrictions on those measures that infringe on the human rights guaranteed to all. A person’s conviction of a crime does not extinguish his or her claim to just treatment at the hands of government.
American policies regarding sex offenders mark them as a special category of criminals for whom no stigma is too crippling, no regulations are too restrictive, and no penalty is too severe. This attitude, driven by fear and outrage, is fundamentally irrational, and so are its results, which make little sense in terms of justice or public safety.
Sex offender laws interfere with a panoply of protected rights: the rights to privacy, to family and home, to freedom of movement and liberty (including the right to work and to reside where one chooses ), and to physical safety and integrity (including protection from harm by private as well as public actors), while not achieving any legitimate legislative objectives. None of these rights are absolute, but laws that infringe upon them must be necessary to serve a legitimate public interest and they must be rational and evidence-based. It is important to recognize that constitutional protections must be afforded to all regardless of the public having a perception of certain classes having a pariah reputation. The government cannot allow rights to be taken away arbitrarily “based solely upon the category of the crime for which the offender is found guilty.”

Issues.

There are several constitutional violations that I will outline in this motion and that I would like this court to consider and address.

1. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental constitutional right to life, liberty, property, my freedom of movement and my freedom of association.

2. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental privacy rights.

3. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental constitutional right to be free from unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive official action.

4. The sex offender registration and notification laws have no rational basis when applied to me in my case.

Facts.

1. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental constitutional right to liberty and freedom of movement and my freedom of association by severely infringing on my ability to travel both interstate and intrastate and also international travel. With all the different state laws and local ordinances that are in place and the constant introduction of new legislation in the different states and the constantly changing local ordinances in thousands of cities and counties across the country, it makes it virtually impossible for me to travel or visit anywhere in this country without a very real fear and potential for violating one of these laws or ordinances. It is virtually impossible for a person of average intelligence to research, assimilate and abide by all the different state laws and local ordinances that apply to registered sex offenders across the country. The punishments for violating one of these laws or ordinances are severe. It is a violation of my fundamental right to liberty and to freely travel and associate in this country. I can not attend meetings or protest that occur in places that prohibit regjstared sex offenders from being present. The registration and notification laws makes it impossible for me to travel to a multitude of major countries in the world as they are notified by our government of my registration status so therefore I am denied entry. These are not hypothetical situations and are not minor inconviences or limited collateral consequences of registration but are major violations of my fundamental rights to liberty. These violations will continue to cause me irreparable damage as long as I am subjected to these registration and notification laws.

The Bill of Rights lists specifically enumerated rights. The Supreme Court has extended fundamental rights by recognizing several fundamental rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, including but not limited to: The right to interstate travel. The right to intrastate travel. Any restrictions a government statute or policy places on these rights are evaluated with strict scrutiny. The Bill of Rights was specifically adopted to protect fundamental freedoms from the will of the majority.

2. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental privacy rights by making public my current personal address and current photo which is not public information and which puts me in physical harm every time I enter or leave my home and even while I’m in my home I can not feel safe. This information is also being publicly distributed on the internet from privately owned and operated websites such as homefacts.com. That information being made public puts not only myself but my families lives and property in danger of physical harm, harrasment and vandalism.These claims are not hypothetical situations or exaggerations, these claims are facts and the possibilities of these incidents occurring are real and in fact some have already occurred in my case. This is not a minor collateral consequence of registration but a major violation of my fundamental right to privacy. The Megans law website also displays my criminal record that should only be available to authorized individuals who meet certain criteria and have a need to know basis, not to the general public at a click of a computer mouse. Again, these violations will continue to cause me irreparable damage as long as I am subjected to these registration and notification laws.

3. The sex offender registration and notification laws violate my fundamental constitutional right to be free from unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive official action.

A. The fact that the courts have previously stated that registration and notification laws are minor collateral consequences of a regulatory scheme is simply unreasonable to conclude now in light of all the recent research that has been done on this subject and based on the severity of those consequences I now face because of the registration and notification laws. These laws are unreasonable and are grossly disproportionate as they severely infringe on my fundamental rights while not achieving any legitimate legislative purpose or objectives of increasing public safety, preventing recidivism or reducing sexual abuse as demostrated in the following reports from some of the leading authorities on this subject.

California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) End of Year Report 2014. (page 13)

Under the current system many local registaring agencies are challenged just keeping up with registration paperwork. It takes an hour or more to process each registrant, the majority of whom are low risk offenders. As a result law enforcement cannot monitor higher risk offenders more intensively in the community due to the sheer numbers on the registry. Some of the consequences of lengthy and unnecessary registration requirements actually destabilize the lifes of registrants and those -such as families- whose lives are often substantially impacted. Such consequences are thought to raise levels of known risk factors while providing no discernable benefit in terms of community safety.

The full report is availible online at. http://www.casomb.org/index.cfm?pid=231

National Institute of Justice (NIJ) US Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs United States of America.

The overall conclusion is that Megan’s law has had no demonstrated effect on sexual offenses in New Jersey, calling into question the justification for start-up and operational costs. Megan’s Law has had no effect on time to first rearrest for known sex offenders and has not reduced sexual reoffending. Neither has it had an impact on the type of sexual reoffense or first-time sexual offense. The study also found that the law had not reduced the number of victims of sexual offenses.

The full report is available online at. https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=247350

The University of Chicago Press for The Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago and The University of Chicago Law School Article DOI: 10.1086/658483

Conclusion.
The data in these three data sets do not strongly support the effectiveness of sex offender registries. The national panel data do not show a significant decrease in the rate of rape or the arrest rate for sexual abuse after implementation of a registry via the internet. The BJS data that tracked individual sex offenders after their release in 1994 did not show that registration had a significantly negative effect on recidivism. And the D.C. crime data do not show that knowing the location of sex offenders by census block can help protect the locations of sexual abuse. This pattern of noneffectiveness across the data sets does not support the conclusion that sex offender registries are successful in meeting their objectives of increasing public safety and lowering recidivism rates.

The full report is availible online at. http://www.jstor.org/stable/full/10.1086/658483

The following is just one example of the estimated cost just to implement SORNA which many states refused to do.

From Justice Policy Institute.
Estimated cost to implement SORNA
Here are some of the estimates made in 2009 expressed in 2014 current dollars: California, $66M; Florida, $34M; Illinois, $24M; New York, $35M; Pennsylvania, $22M; Texas, $44M. In 2014 dollars, Virginia’s estimate for implementation was $14M, and the annual operating cost after that would be $10M.

For the US, the total is $547M. That’s over half a billion dollars – every year – for something that doesn’t work.

http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/08-08_FAC_SORNACosts_JJ.pdf

These are not isolated conclusions but are the same outcomes in the majority of conclusions and reports on this subject from multiple government agencies and throughout the academic community.

The court should not rely on and reiterate the statements and opinions of the legislators or the courts in previous decisions as to the need for the laws because of the high recidivism rates and the high risk offenders pose to the public which simply is not true and is pure hyperbole and fiction. The court should rely on facts and data collected and submitted in reports from the leading authorities and credible experts in the fields such as the following.

California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB)

Sex offender recidivism rate for a new sex offense is 1.8% (page 38)

The full report is available online at.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdcr.ca.gov%2FAdult_Research_Branch%2FResearch_documents%2FOutcome_evaluation_Report_2013.pdf&ei=C9dSVePNF8HfoATX-IBo&usg=AFQjCNE9I6ueHz-o2mZUnuxLPTyiRdjDsQ

Bureau of Justice Statistics
5 PERCENT OF SEX OFFENDERS REARRESTED FOR ANOTHER SEX CRIME WITHIN 3 YEARS OF PRISON RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C.

Within 3 years following their 1994 state prison release, 5.3 percent of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today.

The full report is available online at. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/rsorp94pr.cfm

Document title; A Model of Static and Dynamic Sex Offender Risk Assessment Author: Robert J. McGrath, Michael P. Lasher, Georgia F. Cumming Document No.: 236217 Date Received: October 2011 Award Number: 2008-DD-BX-0013

Findings: Study of 759 adult male offenders under community supervision Re-arrest rate: 4.6% after 3-year follow-up
The sexual re-offense rates for the 746 released in 2005 are much lower than what many in the public have been led to expect or believe. These low re-offense rates appear to contradict a conventional wisdom that sex offenders have very high sexual re-offense rates.

The full report is available online at. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/236217.pdf

Document Title: SEX OFFENDER SENTENCING IN WASHINGTON STATE: RECIDIVISM RATES BY: Washington State Institute For Public Policy.

A study of 4,091 sex offenders either released from prison or community supervision form 1994 to 1998 and examined for 5 years Findings: Sex Crime Recidivism Rate: 2.7%

Link to Report: http://www.oncefallen.com/files/Washington_SO_Recid_2005.pdf

Document Title: Indiana’s Recidivism Rates Decline for Third Consecutive Year BY: Indiana Department of Correction 2009.

The recidivism rate for sex offenders returning on a new sex offense was 1.05%, one of the lowest in the nation. In a time when sex offenders continue to face additional post-release requirements that often result in their return to prison for violating technical rules such as registration and residency restrictions, the instances of sex offenders returning to prison due to the commitment of a new sex crime is extremely low. Findings: sex offenders returning on a new sex offense was 1.05%

Link to Report: http://www.in.gov/idoc/files/RecidivismRelease.pdf

Once again, These are not isolated conclusions but are the same outcomes in the majority of reports on this subject from multiple government agencies and throughout the academic community.

B. These sex offender laws in California (my state) are arbitrary since they are applied in a blanket enforcement policy that makes no distinctions between myself and those who may or may not pose any risk to the public and provides no due process to make those determinations. The registration requirement is unconstitutional in that it saddles me with an “irrefutable presumption” that I am likely to reoffend and so violates my rights to due process of law. I have no “meaningful” opportunity to challenge whether I should be subject to lifetime registration, Even if there was such an opportunity the laws would still be arbitrary as they have no rational basis in my case since I am a non-violent, first time offender from an incident that occurred over a decade ago. These laws actually destabilize my life which increases my risk for re-offense, without achieving any legislative objective of increasing public safety, preventing sexual abuse or preventing recidivism.

C. These laws are oppressive as they affect and limit employment as very few employers will hire me simply because I am on a sex offender website that is accessible to the general public. These laws are also oppressive because they restrict or limit my ability to travel for work or to be employed by local, state or federal agencies and severely affects my ability to obtain a business licence or business loans. They also limit what professions and careers that I can pursue and affect my personal and professional relationships in a severely negative way because of my inclusion on the sex offender registry and the publicly accessible Megans law website. These issues are not minor inconveniences but are major obstacles to my financial stability and to my fundamental right to life and liberty for me and my family. It also affects housing because very few property owners or property management organizations will rent to me for fear of vandalism and or the loss of present or potential tenants because of the accessibility to the registry by the general public. I am reluctant to move or purchase property for fear that I may violate some local ordinance or be forced to move because of some new law or ordinance being enacted and applied retroactively. I am also reluctant to move or purchase property for fear that I will be subjected to even worse harrasment and vandalism by the community in which I move then I have allready endured in my present location. These laws also create real fears of being the victim of vigilante attacks, harrasment and vandalism which is oppressive as it makes me limit my activities to avoid being outside of my residence for fear of being harmed or harassed. I have had to call the police twice due to my family and I being physically threatened in one instance and having threats and profanity written all over our porch on the second incident simply because my information is on the Megans law website. We have had our vehicles vandalized and our lifes threatened because I am subject to these registration and notification laws. These laws are also oppressive as they cause me severe psychosocial stressors that cause major mental and physical disorders which can and do affect my abiity to perform job duties or perform normal daily activities and to reintegrate into society. My psychology reports by the parole department states that I was being subjected to psychosocial stressors because I am being subjected to the sex offender registration and notification laws or Megan’s law. Once again these are not hypothetical, exaggerated incidents that have happened to other people but personal experiences in my case. I cannot move forward or successively reintergrate back into society because of all the collateral consequences caused by the registration and notification laws.The official action of requiring me to registar as a sex offender and the official action which includes my inclusion on the Megans law website is the cause of this oppression. These are severe violations of my fundamental rights. These violations will continue to cause me irreparable damage as long as I am subjected to these registration and notification laws.

4. The sex offender registration and notification laws are completely irrational as applied to me in my case. Since I am a non-violent, non-contact, first time offender from a incident that occurred over a decade ago there is no rational basis to continue to subject me to these laws that have consequences that destabilize my life, restricts my abilities to reintegrate into society and have been shown to actually increase risk factors that increases my risk of re-offense while not achieving any legislative objective of preventing sexual abuse or increasing public safety. Since these laws have been seen as strictly regulatory in nature and not considered part of the punishment for an offense, there must be some evidence that the regulations actually achieve some legislative objective. These laws were originally designed to give law enforcement a tool to track and apprehend sexually violent predators, child abducters/rapist and habitual repeat offenders when such acts have been committed in the community but have since been expanded to the point to make the registration and notification laws useless to law enforcement or the general public. Just because these laws are so popular within the legislature or the public does not mean that there is a rational basis for such laws. With the facts and evidence of all the destabilizing collateral consequences I endure and all the recent research done on this subject there is overwhelming evidence that these laws are completely irrational and counterproductive especially when applied to non-violent, first time offenders such as myself.

Conclusion.
The sex offender registration and notification laws or Megans law, as applied to me, severely violate my fundamental rights to life, liberty, property, my freedom of movement and my freedom of association. These laws also violate my fundamental privacy rights and my fundamental right to be free from unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive official actions. These laws have no rational basis in my case and are actually counterproductive since these laws do in fact increase known risk factors for re-offense without achieving any legitimate legislative objectives in increasing public safety, preventing sexual abuse or preventing recidivism. It is in the publics best interest to grant me this relief as it will increase my ability to reintergrate into society and increase the probability that I will maintain stability in my life and be a law abiding, productive member of society which actually decreases my risk for re-offense. It will also allow governmental agencies and law enforcement agencies to re-direct their limited resources to monitor high risk offenders more intensively thereby increasing public safety.
These laws will continue to cause me irreparable damage if the court fails to grant me relief.
No one can doubt that child sexual abuse is traumatic and devastating. The question is not whether the state has an interest in preventing such harm, but whether current laws are effective in doing so.

Prayer.
I pray the court grant me Declaratory relief and/or Injunction relief or any other relief the court deems necessary and to enjoin local, state, and federal agencies from requiring me to register as a sex offender and subjecting me to the public notification laws or Megans law. Also, I’m asking the court, if the court deems it necessary, to conduct evidentiary hearings to determine if I should be granted relief from these laws and to appoint me appropriate council during these proceedings since I can not afford an attorney.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to my knowledge on __________ Signed: _____________________________

While CA RSOL is primarily related to laws and sex offender issues in California, other states’ laws may have impact on California. Similarly, laws enacted in response to California laws that have been repealed by federal court should have jurisdiction in all the states of the appellate court. In this instance, the decision to reverse the Internet ban from California Propisition 35 should affect the entire jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit. One of those states of jurisdiction is Montana.

However, Montana recently enacted a law earlier this year, Montana House Bill 88 (HB88), dictates that all Internet identifiers be included at regstration and when they become active. Here is a link to the PDF of the statute:

(PDF FILE) http://leg.mt.gov/bills/2015/hb0099/HB0088_x.pdf

Here is the particular part of HB88 that, in my opinion, violates the 9th Circuit judgment. The specific ordinance is 46-23-504 (page 6 of the PDF document; edited for clarity):)

46-23-504“(3) The information collected from the offender at the time of registration must include (h) all of the offender’s e-mail addresses and social media screen names.”

My questions, not in any particular order:

1. Shouldn’t this law be dead in the water, based upon the unequivocal decision by the 9th Circuit panel?

2. If not, is it incumbant upon the registered citizen to pay for the challenge to the Montana court system, given that this is a federal law that is supposed to invalidate all such laws in its jurisdiction, which includes Montana?

3. What other avenues can be pursued?

I’m a bit of a layman here, but what is the scenario for Montana registrants to fight this already-rendered-unconstitutional law?

I posted this a couple of days ago and it hasn’t appeared. Here goes again. The academic paper at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2616429 is about how the advocates for a registry in Smith v. Doe (2003) at SCOTUS presented a tissue of fabrications which falsely painted sex offenders as very dangerous, even given the information available at the time. This legalized the registry, so it was a big deal and still is. And the falseness on which it was based is a big deal that seriously affects the lives of some 800,000 registered citizens around the US. Talk about sausage! People here need to read this one. Do I have to sell this any more?

NPS, Steve, Margaret Moon;

The majority of registered citizens have been through all or part of what all of you have gone through. I called that PASD, or Post Arrest Stress Disorder. The breaking in of doors, interviewing neighbors, face being posted all over the news and newspapers, friends abandon you, families turn their backs on you, aquaintances scorn you and law enforcement, prosecutors seek to ruin you. There is a feeling of helplessness, a desire to die (literally) by any means possible, there is no place to go for rest or solitude, suffering from paranoia, dreading any knock at your door for fear it may be the police. These are real, the effects of the arrest last a lifetime. I’ve learned to cope after 14 years, my circle of friends has shrunk considerably, I wake up each day grateful for the little I have. I had a stellar counselor, a man that was truly concerned about my outcome and well being. I learned a valuable lesson; because good people do foolish things, they’re not bad people. I tried to emphasize in my life the forgiveness I received from my God and my family and friends. I went door to door in my neighborhood and spoke to those who would listen, explaining what had happened and told them I’ll live openly and honestly, and that my doors are open if they have a need.
I have some friends who are in law enforcement, I am friends with the local chief of police, I’ve worked in police officers homes; what I’ve concluded for me is that I respect the men, but have little respect for their positions. I also have grown to expect nothing from anybody, but to depend solely upon God and the abilities I’m blessed with. Our losses because of a single foolish choice are unlimited; loss of income, loss of retirement, loss of property, friends, homes, jobs, loss of love, including future loves. Those pale in comparison to the loss of freedom we once had, but will never enjoy again as long as we’re on the registry. I wake up and wonder “what will I do today?” and the answer 6 days a week is “work.” Be grateful for the few small blessings you have, more shall come in time.