A lawyer for New Jersey arguing Monday before the state Supreme Court called it vital to public safety that certain sex offenders register as such for life.
“Society has the right to know of their presence, not in order to punish them, but to protect itself,” Deputy Attorney General Emily Anderson said, defending a provision of a 1994 law named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka of Hamilton Township who was raped and murdered by a neighbor already twice convicted of sexual assault. Full Article
Emily Anderson said, “Society has the right to know of their presence …” so she is a liar. Of course society has no right to know. If they did, then society would have a right to know about people who got angry and shot a neighbor with a gun. Or about people who drove home drunk and “accidentally” murdered a neighbor walking down the sidewalk by running over them. Or about people who broke into their neighbors’ homes to rob them and ended up needing to beat the family nearly to death.
So no, society absolutely does not have a right to know about “$EX offenders”. Not the tiniest bit of a right. Big government lies. All the time.
Also, it is much, much more likely that the person that Megan Kanka visited would never have been convicted of any $EX crime. And what happened to her just as easily could have happened anywhere. It was surely not any more *statistically* likely that it would have happened where it did. The problem was not necessarily the guy that did it, the problem was that she would go to a house like that. If parents don’t prevent that, then they can read a Registry all day and night and it will do literally nothing to help them or improve anyone’s safety. Registries decrease safety.
Megan Kanka’s name has been dishonored and sullied by Megan’s Flaw. It’s disgraceful how the “protect the children” profiteers abuse dead children.
I’d like everyone to take a step back from this story and consider what it actually says: the State is literally and figuratively on defense this case and the judges are throwing the BS flag on aspects of ML. Think again about that and how much of a reversal it is from even a few years ago. Previously someone would have to fight tooth and nail just to make any progress; now, the State is doing the clawing-back.
What absolutely disgusted me in this story was the Dep. AG’s comments:
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“They entered guilty pleas based on the knowledge that after 15 years they had the possibility of appearing before a judge and getting taken off any registration obligations,” Timpone said.
Anderson argued, however, that such intentions do not matter.
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The intentions of the officers of the court(s) back then don’t matter?!?! The intentions of the offender based on competent counsel don’t matter!?!?? The integrity of the justice system does not matter?!?!? This lady needs to have her shingle revoked. Our justice system was intentionally designed to “undercatch” criminals in order to avoid “bycatching” innocent people. This woman–and everyone supporting MLs–prefer it the other way around. TRULY a travesty of our justice system.