ELKHART, Ind. — Until one day in December, Zachery Anderson was a typical 19-year-old in a small Midwestern city.
He studied computer science at the local community college. He lived with his parents and two younger brothers in a sun-filled home on the St. Joseph River, where framed family photos hang from the walls and a pontoon boat is docked outside. Full Article
This is of course an update from CA RSOL post last June 7th, which had six comments. New stuff here is how the”victim” and her family are all trying to help the guy. That’s really good news; usually the victim is defensive and hostile.
Other thing is the prosecutor and judge are being honest about their feelings… Darn kids nowadays using Internet to hookup !!! Times are a changin’ in the Bible Belt ain’t they, Mr. Judge
The laws have to catch up with what the kids are doing.
As of tonite this NYTimes article is approaching 1000 comments.
“But Rick Jones, a state senator in Michigan and one of the authors of the state’s sex offender registry laws, dismissed that defense. The law requires people to be responsible for determining the age of their sexual partners, he said, and in a case like Mr. Anderson’s, the punishment seems appropriate.
“A 19-year-old knows that you have to be very careful,…” I would like to interview Mr. Jones, friends, when he was 19 to see how responsible he was?
This judge should loose his seat as a judge. If you read the article, he has a very low opinion of internet dating and he let that influence his handling of this case. He could have spared this young man from having to be on the registry(Holmes Act), but instead berated him for internet dating and chose to put him on the registry. The same goes for the prosecutor in the case. he let his own opinion also influence him to argue that the Holmes Act didn’t need to be applied. I feel bad for the kid, he didn’t do anything illegal in my opinion. Unfortunately, the letter of the law there does not give any flexibility when he was lied to by the girl, something she admitted in court. The whole thing wreaks…but then the whole existence of the registry and the witch hunt that results does too.
What business is it of the judge to try to legislate HIS version of social interaction from the bench? What is the difference whether they met online, at a friend’s party, or at a church social? Dumbsass legislators keep coming up with new, enhanced punishments for sex crimes when, in reality, they need to start doing the hard work of revising, correcting, and updating these increasingly draconian and outdated laws instead of merely vote-pandering!