Source: yahoo.com 2/21/23 Prisoners with long-term sentences need more opportunities to have their sentences reviewed. Lawmakers and state agencies need to identify and address racial disparities in sentencing. And the amount of a drug involved in a crime should be decoupled from the length of an offender’s sentence. Those are some of the recommendations from the authors of a yearlong study of the nation’s use of lengthy prison sentences published Tuesday. The independent task force, co-chaired by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, and former Republican South Carolina…
Read MoreMonth: March 2023
SC: Man sentenced to 30 years for killing 73-year-old registered sex offender in North Myrtle Beach
Source: myhorrynews.com 3/21/22 A 22-year-old was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday for murdering a North Myrtle Beach man he found through the sex offender registry last year. Kameron Scott Horton pleaded guilty to killing 73-year-old Darrell Lane Johnson on Jan. 30, 2022. Horton addressed the court after he was sentenced. Kameron Scott Horton is charged with murder in connection to the killing of a 73-year-old man in North Myrtle Beach. Photo courtesy of the J. Reuben Long Detention Center “I understand the severity of what I’ve done.…
Read MoreCA Lobby Day: ‘View From the Peanut Gallery’ by ACSOL President Professor Catherine Carpenter
On March 21, 2023, I joined our Executive Director Janice Bellucci and more than 60 people for “Lobby Day” in Sacramento. It may have been my first time participating in Lobby Day, but it won’t be my last. As President of ACSOL I am proud that our organization is based on three critical pillars: Change through Advocacy, Education, and Legislation. I still believe in the power of change through advocacy – that, of course, is why I write as many law review articles as I do, and why I am…
Read MoreACSOL CA Lobby Day 2023 Large and Powerful
More than 60 registrants, family members and supporters met in the offices of 41 members of the California Assembly and Senate during Lobby Day 2023. The focus of the lobbying effort was to request improvements to the Tiered Registry Law which allows some registrants the ability to petition for removal from the registry. “This is the largest number of people who have ever participated in Lobby Day,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “And they showed up despite cold and wet weather.” Lobby Day participants met in the offices of…
Read MoreIreland: Sex offender allowed move back into family home
Source: roscommonherald.ie 3/20/23 A father and convicted sex offender is to be immediately allowed to return home to live with his wife and children after spending more than two and a half years apart. The man moved out of the family home in September 2020 as part of a Tusla safety plan for his three children aged under 18. Tusla, the Child and Family Agency (CFA) intervened after discovering that the man is a convicted sex offender. Now, after living alone away from the family since September 2020, Judge Mary…
Read MoreACSOL April 22, 2023 Online Meeting
Please join ACSOL Executive Director and civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci as well as ACSOL board member and criminal defense attorney Chance Oberstein for our next meeting. The meeting will be held on Saturday, April 22, online on Zoom beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 PM Eastern, and will last at least two hours. You can use the Zoom app or call in using a Zoom phone number. There is no registration needed for this meeting. You can use the Zoom app to see Janice and Chance and choose…
Read MoreCO: Does mandatory reporting of child abuse help or hurt? A Colorado task force is taking a second look.
Source: coloradosun.com 3/7/23 A newly launched state task force is only the second in the nation to look closely at reforming policies that have gone unchallenged for decades. Every person with a conscience is against child abuse. But for the first time in decades, policymakers are giving the most widely used intervention in child abuse cases — mandatory reporting — a second look. In Colorado, a task force born of calls to strengthen mandatory reporting laws after a horrific abuse case has grown into something different: a look at whether…
Read More1,000 federal judges seek to remove personal info from internet as threats skyrocket
Source: cnbc.com 3/17/23 More than 1,000 federal judges have asked the U.S. Courts system for help removing personally identifiable information from the internet under a program implemented after a New Jersey judge’s son was murdered at their house. That is nearly one-third of the active and retired federal judges eligible for the program, a spokesman for the U.S. Courts system told CNBC on Friday. The response to the online scrubbing program was detailed in the agency’s annual report, released Thursday. The report also details what it called “a dramatic rise in threats and inappropriate communications against…
Read MoreRI: Federal judge rules sex offender residency law is unconstitutional
Source: turnto10.com 3/17/23 A state law that makes it a crime for Level 3 sex offenders to live within 1,000 feet of a school was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Thursday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island challenged the statue when it was first enacted in 2015, and it’s been subject to a preliminary injunction barring its enforcement since then. Currently in Rhode Island, state law says sex offenders are barred from living within 300 feet of a school. In the wake of Thursday’s ruling, it…
Read MoreCDC Inflated Data About Teen Girls and Sexual Assault
Source: reason.com 3/16/23 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) inflated data about teen girls and sexual assault in a news release about a new CDC report on teenage mental health. In 2021, the percentage of teen girls who reported that they had ever been “forced to have sex” was up 27 percent since 2019, the health agency said, calling it “the first increase since the CDC began monitoring this measure.” The percentage of teen girls reporting this in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey reporting did rise, unfortunately—but…
Read MoreUS no longer seeking death for man convicted in Sjodin case
Source: news.yahoo.com 3/14/23 U.S. prosecutors said Tuesday that they will no longer seek the death penalty for a Minnesota man already on death row but awaiting resentencing for the kidnapping and killing of college student Dru Sjodin in 2003 — a case that led to changes in sex offender registration laws. [the national sex offender public website] U.S. Attorney Mac Schneider in North Dakota filed a notice with the court withdrawing his effort to seek the death penalty for Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. — a move he told The Associated Press…
Read MoreAZ: Arizona lawmakers consider sex doll bill
Source: 12news.com 3/16/23 Arizona state lawmakers on Thursday considered legislation banning sex dolls that look like children. The bill, HB2169, would make possessing, trafficking or importing a sex doll that is made to look like an infant or child a class 4 felony in Arizona. Further provisions and penalties are also included for situations where the doll has been made using a picture of an actual child. According to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, an increasing number of these dolls have been discovered in cases nationwide, including three…
Read MoreCA Sex Offender Management Board Discusses Further Improvements to Tiered Registry Law
The California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB) continued today its discussions of improvements to the Tiered Registry Law during its regularly scheduled monthly meeting. During those discussions, CASOMB identified three improvements to that law as their top priorities — removal of CP offenses from Tier 3, creating an off-ramp for those assigned to Tier 3 and allowing registrants to access their profiles on the Megan’s Law website. Also during those discussions, CASOMB determined that “deeper study” is required before they can make a recommendation regarding either the reduction of PC…
Read MoreWV: Clarksburg sex offender gets 4 years for federal failure to register
Source: wvnews.com 3/14/23 CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WV News) — A 28-year-old sex offender from Terra Alta, Preston County, has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for federal failure to update sex offender registration. Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Kleeh on Tuesday gave ______ credit for time served since Christmas Eve. Read the full article
Read MoreACSOL President Catherine Carpenter Identifies, Analyzes Method to Win Court Cases
ACSOL President Catherine Carpenter, who is also an endowed law professor at Southwestern School of Law in Los Angeles, has identified and analyzed a method that can be used to win registrants’ cases in court. That method, known as the irrebuttable presumption doctrine, shifts the burden of proof to governments when they make allegations such as that all registrants pose a current danger to society and are very likely to re-offend. “Professor Carpenter has provided an extremely valuable tool to the registrant community in the research she has conducted that…
Read MoreCA: Santa Clara County jail inmate dies by suicide
Source: ktvu.com 3/11/23 SAN JOSE, Calif. – A man arrested for alleged sex crimes has died by suicide in a Santa Clara County jail, authorities said. The 44-year-old was found unresponsive in his cell during a welfare check shortly before 8:20 a.m. Saturday, county officials said. Deputies and medical staff of the Santa Clara County Main Jail administered Narcan and performed CPR to revive the man. Paramedics pronounced the man to be dead a few minutes after their arrival. Authorities said there were no signs of foul play and that…
Read MoreMN: Minnesota man kills sex offender using antler
Source: sfgate.com 3/10/23 GRAND MARAIS, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota man was charged Friday with fatally beating an elderly man previously convicted of child sexual assault, who he believed had stalked his young daughter in the past. Levi Axtell, 27, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Lawrence V. Scully, 77, who was beaten to death Wednesday at his home in Grand Marais. A criminal complaint filed Friday said Axtell killed Scully with a shovel and a moose antler and then drove to the Cook County Sheriff’s office…
Read MoreMA: Judge considers requests for triple damages in SORB head ouster
Source: salemnews.com 3/6/23 NEWBURYPORT — A judge is now considering a request to triple the $820,000 awarded by a jury last November to the former chair of the Sex Offender Registry Board over her removal by former Gov. Deval Patrick in 2014. Saundra Edwards, of Lawrence, a career prosecutor who was tapped by Patrick to head the agency, was removed from her position just three months before the end of Patrick’s term — a move Patrick admitted was linked to the agency’s handling of his brother-in-law’s first spousal rape case.…
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