South Carolina can continue to require some teens convicted of serious sex crimes to appear on the state’s public sex-offender registry and wear an electronic monitor for the rest of their lives, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
A boy from Spartanburg County who was 15 when he sexually assaulted a 5-year-old boy and ended up on the registry challenged the law. Full Article
this is such an outrage to subject people to a lifetime wearing a monitor or registration but for a kids for the rest of their lives..outrageous…theres no way in helllll I would do it. I still feel phantom vibrations on my leg after wearing one for two and half years. there’s no way. there would be another aurora Colorado or sandy hook. this can’t continue something really bad is going to happen..can you imagine what the parents of these kids kids are thinking. I bet they aren’t to thrilled with this crap….
“If the requirement that juvenile sex offenders must register and must wear an electronic monitor is in need of change, that decision is to be made by the Legislature — not the courts,”
^Passing the buck.. finger-pointing and circling the wagon per usual !
“They noted that the registry’s goal is to protect the public.”
^False! The “goal” is to continue to purposely and knowingly mislead the public while exploiting unwarranted fear and the presumption of risk – FOR PROFIT.
@Registry Rage
I wonder if perhaps the SC Supreme Court (SCSC) are using this as a way to toss it into the legislature’s lap, whether they want it or not! Maybe SCSC sees how stupid and useless and completely out of control the whole registry thing is, and is going to make the legislators feel the heat for the monster they’ve created.
I’m torn between shaming SCSC for their buck-passing, and praising them for making it 100% a bad-PR issue for the legislature.
I guess the teen’s lawyer isn’t aware that it’s “just” a regulatory issue, not a punishment. Were it punishment, his argument of “being publicly branded a sex offender and electronically monitored for the rest of his life is too harsh a punishment.” Yup, sure is a good thing it’s not punishment….
I kind of wonder if this case could make it to SCOTUS and be found to be cruel and unusual based on the same logic that won a ban on death penalties for minors. That would be a wonderful backdoor way to get it correctly labeled as punishment.
–AJ
I wouldn’t expect much different from a Rightist state with a Rightist state Supreme Court.
@Michael
Yeah, agreed. After all, this is the state from where the whole nullification and states’ rights ideas came. Not to mention they were first to secede. Strangely, the states which seceded all seem to be ones with harsh registry laws. They love laws, as long as it’s not Uncle Sam making them.
–AJ
I wonder how many of these lawmakers and judges did the same thing when they were kids? When I was in HS, I knew a classmate fooled around with girls, much younger than him and went to parties with them, when he was well out of HS. He eventually became the police chief of the city I currently live in, until his retirement.