The Senate Public Safety Committee today approved a weakened version of Assembly Bill 514.
The original version of AB 514 would have prohibited some individuals convicted of a sex offense involving a minor from living within 1,000 feet of day care centers. The bill would have applied to both registrants on parole as well as registrants not on parole.
The amended version of AB 514 does not prohibit any individual convicted of a sex offense from living near a day care center. Instead, it requires local law enforcement officilas to notify day care centers when a registrant moves within 1,000 feet. This requirement does not apply to individuals whose names are currently exempt from the Megan’s Law website.
During consideration of the bill, three organizations — ACSOL ACLU and CA Public Defenders — spoke in opposition to the original bill. The organizations educated committee members about recent court decisions which have determined that similar residency restrictions are unconstitutional and/or limited the restrictions only to registrants while on parole.
Senator Scott Wiener stated he had “serious concerns” about the language of the original bill. He added that the bill would have the effect of excluding all registrants from living in densely populated cities such as San Francisco, a city he represents. He also stated that the original bill would require registrants who currently live near day centers to move.
Senator Nancy Skinner, who chairs the Senate Public Safety Committee, stated that she shared Senator Wiener’s concerns. She added that the sex offender registry, as currently established, is flawed despite last year’s passage of a Tiered Registry. She suggested the amendment that was ultimately decided upon and which the bill’s author, Assembly Rudy Salas, agreed to.
The bill must next be considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee where it could face opposition by the law enforcement community that would bear the expense of notifying day care centers about registrants who live nearby.
Also see
CA: Senate Public Safety to Consider Residency Restrictions Bill on June 26
Court decisions:
Order – MSA – May 2018_000012 (city of Maywood)
Order – Partial SMJ – Dec 2017 (city of Adelanto)
Well the issue was won on summary judgement so it is pretty plain that according to at least the federal court it is so obviously preempted by state law that summary judgement was proper. Nice use of judicial notice btw. Well if state law preempts residency restriction then the notification is obviously preempted by state law and only applies to parolees as well and I do not know why that was not brought up during hearings. There is nothing set in stone since it was only a lower court decision. I am not going to worry about it much I have to much going on right now and will address it when I get a chance
I would like to see the RFAs served in that federal case though. I also I find it interesting that the court took judicial notice of the city counsel hearing. I guess it is a indisputable adjudacative fact that the members stated what they stated though.
This legislative process is getting more ridiculous. It doesn’t even take a single tragic isolated crime like the Poway teen rape murder to bring them in to write new sex offense laws that affect all former offenders. Now all it takes is a scared parent with an over active imagination, fueled by late night viewings of SCI, phoning a legislator, and the legislators spending all this time to come up with a law, that even if the crime was likely, the solution would be ineffective. Wow.
BTW, re 290.03, which states, “The Legislature finds and declares that a comprehensive system of risk assessment, supervision, monitoring and containment for registered sex offenders residing in California communities is necessary to enhance public safety and reduce the risk of recidivism posed by these offenders…”
The writers of that section made a major mistake, if they wanted to continue to obfuscate on whether 290 is punishment. They gave us the ability to challenge retroactivity.
Containment is as within prison walls, but not even that, it is as in the lack of ability to exercise your freedom, which is what the prison walls do, and that could pretty well free everyone from registration as no one has been “sentenced” to registration to this date. Until that error of that word in there, the state had contended registrants’ freedom was NOT contained — that is what the argument on the point was about, although not using the word “containment” but saying the same thing — so it was not punishment. That is what they were arguing about, whether you were contained from exercising your full freedom.
The court ruled that going in shortly once a year to register was not sufficient to be a restriction your freedom. However, when the state now has the law itself saying that its purpose is to “contain” registrants, they made the huge mistake of tipping their hand, pulled the rug out from under their previous denials, and now they can no longer argue the law is not punishment — since that word “containment” was added, the previous rulings on punishment are moot. If it is intended to contain our freedom, that has a long history of court rulings saying that is punishment, can even be sufficient to bring a habeas corpus action since that containment is a matter of holding you. Gee, that was even the specific point of a ruling on a habeas corpus challenge to registration about 30 years ago!
When they screwed up and included that word “containment,” they stated the intent and purpose, and they proved our arguments of this being punishment. And as punishment it cannot be applied retroactively. And since no one has been “sentenced” to registration, no one registering now would have to register.
But I don’t know why I waste my fingers typing these challenges here, no one here listens, this group is too meek to actually go after the foundation of registration. We all know the entire concept of registration is corrupt, but we refuse to go after it. I don’t even get the impression this group so much as knows how things have progressed over the decades, or understand how much that tier plan got the prosecutors everything they have been trying to get for decades but were blocked, such as increasing the registration time for three misdemeanors from 7 years to at least 10 years, and how this idiotic group cheered on giving them exactly that! This group shows little understanding of what is going on, it appears to lack any sort of comprehensive overview, so it doesn’t even understand the strategies we are up against, it misses the details at every turn. And as such, we just keep getting more and more bills to make registration ever worse.
Also, all is now lost in the courts at the federal level. Nothing far reaching we want will ever get through SCOTUS, we might as well forget any court action on that stuff. The only possibility is legislative. That is not possible at the moment at the federal level, but that is the only thing we can work on, and the political action there now can’t be overlooked just because of certain failure for now — legislators need to hear this arguments over and over for years, it needs to be made part of the conversation, before they finally come around.
It will now take longer than the rest of our lives to change SCOTUS to our benefit, but politics is flexible. But this group is not run by political pros, clearly does not understand that (as in when I warned that we would get only one chance at tiers, there will be no tinkering after that or advance from it, so we have to get it right, and we have to fight hard to get it changed to be right — but we didn’t, we cheerleaded instead, we showed no clue that that was it, now or never, we were co-opted by political pros from the prosecutors, we sided with them as if they were our friends. And we blew it, PRESUMING we could tinker later to make it right — and expressing dismay and surprise that we were told NO, in no uncertain terms.
Again, no one would listen. All we got was denials of what that tier plan does. Gee, under that tier plan, someone convicted of misdemeanor indecent exposure say 35 years ago will have to register for life if they have moved out of California without first registering here for at least 10 years — you cannot even apply without showing 10 years of registration IN CALIFORNIA, in fact I think it requires CURRENT registration in California.
And registration for ANY misdemeanor is not acceptable, 10 years is not bearable for a misdemeanor, 10 years is life destructive, completely undermines your entire lifetime career trajectory and life trajectory — even this group is passing off 10 years as if it is nothing. 10 years for a low level felony is not acceptable, it completely undermines your lifetime career and life trajectory. Five years is the standard mark for rehabilitation, even for major felonies, so how can 10 years be a minimum for registration!? Of course, we cheerleaded a tier proposal making the standard 30 years of clean record for old offenses to be eliminated without having to go through the entire process (but still open to challenge, not AUTOMATIC), not 10 years. So why do I even bother typing anything here.
The new changes have been posted on this bill. It talks about NEW RESIDENCE within 1,000 feet of the facility.
SECTION 1. Section 3003.7 is added to the Penal Code, to read:
3003.7. A law enforcement agency shall notify a child day care facility, as defined in Section 1596.750 of the Health and Safety Code, when a person for whom registration with that law enforcement agency is required pursuant to Section 290 registers a new residence within 1,000 feet of the facility, if one or more of the victims of the crimes for which the person is required to register was 14 years of age or younger at the time the crime was committed. Law enforcement shall only notify facilities of persons as to whom information may be available to the public pursuant to the Internet Web site as provided in Section 290.46.
SEC. 2. If the Commission on State Mandates determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.
Just a head’s up that this bill passed tonight. See: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB514