The opinion in People v. Tetter, which came out a couple days ago, is another great decision to add to our growing list of cases where courts have found the registry to be “punishment” and conditions of the registry have crossed the line into irrational.
Kyle Tetter was 21 when he met a girl on an online social media app. Her profile said she was 18. Even though he later learned she was 16, they continued the consensual relationship and eventually she became pregnant and her mother reported him to the police.
Tetter was sentenced to 180 days in county jail, 4 years’ sex offender probation, and lifetime on the registry.
The appeal directly addresses the question, “Whether Sex Offender Statutes Constitute Punishment”
I realized long ago that “fair play & morality” are one and the same. nuff said!
I’ve repeatedly stated that even if the registry can be argued as “administrative,” laws targeting those on the registry are anything but. It’s reassuring to see at leastone court agree with that assessment.
Now since I was convicted at 21 for a crime I committed in my later teens, does this mean I should move to IL? (rhetorical question)
This is an amazing piece of progress! More and more of these decisions are being made where even basic provisions of registration are being recognized as punishment.
I comments at length in the General Comments section, so I won’t re-post all that here.
I will say the comments by the dissenting judge are ridiculous. It is clear she is biased against any male committing a sex crime and should have recused herself.
It is also a shame that they didn’t take the opportunity to look at the “frightening and high” and “80 percent recidivism” rate that Smith V Doe 2003 and all sex offenders laws and failed court cases cite as reasoning behind the laws. This case basically allows all that to stand but say that even with that this one individual isn’t part of that high percentage so it’s cruel and unusual. Well, hey, that’s the case with over 85% of sex offenders as a whole, and 99% of certain types of sex crimes. Where is their justice as long as Smith V Doe fiction stands as fact?
Court’s complete decision and a VERY interesting read is here:
http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/AppellateCourt/2018/3rdDistrict/3150243.pdf
For those fighting cases now this one lays out lots of recent decisions in our favor to use in your legal battles.
With the number of decisions like this one continuing to grow, hopefully it starts to avalanche and bury the registry once and for all!
From the article:
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“Since the legislature enacted sex offender statutes that restrict a convicted sex offender’s presence, residence, and liberty to move about society, the court has not addressed whether the sex offender statutes’ punitive effects negate the leglegislature’s intent to deem the laws civil.For the reasons stated below, we find that they do”
In addition to finding registration requirements that have been ratcheted up since the original decision, the court made another interesting observation and looked at the characteristics of the Defendant. As opposed to taking a “one size fits all” approach, it recognized that “sex offenders” are not homogeneous and should therefore not be all treated the same. It found, “Defendant is simply not the person at whom the sex offender statutes’ purposes are aimed. Its statutes are not tailored to regulate only dangerous offenders, those likely to recidivate, or those with little or no potential for rehabilitation”
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That’s one court making a distinction that not all sex offenders are the same, unlike what the 2003 Smith v Doe decision had categorized sex offenders as a homogeneous group that recidivates at an 80% rate.
In California, although there are risk assessment level administered to their registrants, they all share the same term of registering: for life. The IL court essentially states that the system is grouping people who make mistakes with people that commit violent sex offenses (plural), and that isn’t the way to go.
Brilliant and extremely hopeful analysis of this recent Illinois Appellate Court decision. This sounds like exactly what we have been saying all along. (Courtesy of Florida Action Committee)
Illinois Appellate Court Rules Lifetime Sex Offender Registration “Grossly Disproportionate Punishment” for 21 Year Old.
The opinion in People v. Tetter, which came out a couple days ago, is another great decision to add to our growing list of cases where courts have found the registry to be “punishment” and conditions of the registry have crossed the line into irrational.
Kyle Tetter was 21 when he met a girl on an online social media app. Her profile said she was 18. Even though he later learned she was 16, they continued the consensual relationship and eventually she became pregnant and her mother reported him to the police.
Tetter was sentenced to 180 days in county jail, 4 years’ sex offender probation, and lifetime on the registry.
The appeal directly addresses the question, “Whether Sex Offender Statutes Constitute Punishment”
The Court acknowledges prior precedent that found it didn’t, but goes on to say, “Our legislature subsequently passed numerous amendments imposing additional requirements and restrictions upon sex offenders. Most importantly, it imposed specific restrictions on where sex offenders may be present or live. Sex offenders cannot have jobs where they work, at any time for any reason, within 500 feet of a school or public park or within 100 feet of a school bus stop.[The law] also effectively bars offenders from working any job requiring extensive travel; sex offenders must notify, in person, both Illinois law enforcement and the destination’s law enforcement when they are away from home for three or more days. 730 ILCS 150/3(a) (West 2012). The amendments since [the precedent case] “directly restrict where [a sex offender] can live, work, and even move about his community.” Thus, we are faced with very different and more restrictive statutes than those addressed in [the precedent cases]”
“Since the legislature enacted sex offender statutes that restrict a convicted sex offender’s presence, residence, and liberty to move about society, the court has not addressed whether the sex offender statutes’ punitive effects negate the legislature’s intent to deem the laws civil.For the reasons stated below, we find that they do”
In addition to finding registration requirements that have been ratcheted up since the original decision, the court made another interesting observation and looked at the characteristics of the Defendant. As opposed to taking a “one size fits all” approach, it recognized that “sex offenders” are not homogeneous and should therefore not be all treated the same. It found, “Defendant is simply not the person at whom the sex offender statutes’ purposes are aimed. Its statutes are not tailored to regulate only dangerous offenders, those likely to recidivate, or those with little or no potential for rehabilitation”
Here, the court (for one of the first times in personal recollection, at least) evaluated the gravity of the offender’s conduct in relation to the restrictions imposed by the registry and found that in the case of Tetter, a lifetime on the registry is excessive and a violation of the eighth amendment.
What will complicate this disproportionate finding in the future is the enactment of “risk” based registration (both in Illinois and other states). If the states continue to evolve to so called ‘risk’ based registration, the government can always assert that a person *may* recidivate in the future. A Court may be more apt to uphold lifetime registration schemes if an ostensibly “scientific” test — one like the SARATSO/Static-99R — is used. Even if the “scientific” Static-99R is muddled with flaws, you can bet a Court will cleverly word an opinion so that the Static-99R is upheld. Many years will pass before the SARATSO/Static-99R is exposed for the fraud that it is (and what it is being used for).
It’s NOT “punishment!” The Supreme Court says it’s not!!
{{/sarc}}
Something is very very EVIL about this sex offender registration, I have a real good theory as to the REAL reason why politicians and other proponents of these laws want to maintain this but just can’t prove it without certain people at the top willing to come forth with certain type of information. In other words, something else is going on with these laws that is hidden or behind the scenes. I say this because of the rational used by proponents to justify these laws, i.e., a pandemic of sex crimes, high recidivism rate, sex fiend zombies out there with razor sharp claws, blood shot eyes and fanged teeth slobbering at the mouth, naked and hiding in the bushes next to an elementary school waiting to snatch 200 or 300 kids—at the same time. Seriously, I know people (at work) who actually think all this to be the case. Anyway, this rational has been shot down like a Japanese Zero in the Pacific during WWII. These is over 15 years of solid, empirical research by some of the most respected clinicians in the country that disprove this high recidivism—-LIE! And I have yet to read any empirical evidence from proponents of sex offender laws to support their position. What is going on is this, people find sex crimes very repulsive, and they are, and it is an EMOTIONAL issue so they are more then willing to believe any negative press on this. Statistics, logic, reasoning be damned! Proponents of these laws wouldn’t care if the recidivism rate was 0.00001%! Even this percentage makes for a pandemic! So it doesn’t matter what these reputable professors, clinicians and other say about this issue—proponents of sex offender laws don’t give a damn!
To Eric and T, I wouldn’t say our government is exactly corrupt. It has actually become flawed over time as the tools to keep this from happening were built into the US Constitution but have been watered down by bad court precedents, especially over the last 100 years.
I recommend these two books:
Sex Offender Laws, by Richard G Wright
The Hollow Hope, by Gerald Rosenberg
I also recommend reading any summaries of “The Federalist Papers” to understand the government problems that needed to be solved by the US Constitution.
In a nutshell, Politicians are ELECTED by the people, and in order to be popular and keep their jobs, they have to create legislation that keeps the MAJORITY of those people happy. If the majority want the Japanese imprisoned because we are at way with some of them, blacks to ride in the back of the bus, Communist Sympathizers kept out of government, and women not allowed to vote then the politicians only keep their jobs if they meet those needs.
To keep those who are hated and politically powerless groups from being run over by the majority, we have APPOINTED judges and Justices of the Supreme Court to make sure everyone is treated equally and protected by the US Constitution. Specifically, the prohibition of Bills of Attainder should keep these groups protected from arbitrary government action against them without very narrowly tailored laws that don’t violate the Constitution.
Where this fails, is under what’s understood to be an unwritten rule (At least I don’t think it is written) that the US Constitution does not make the Legislation powerless to stop an imminent threat to our way of life and our people. If there is a threat, like “80 percent recidivism”, then they will use any excuse to rule those laws Constitutional. That one false bit of info pretty much gives legislators a green light to do whatever they want to. Those bad judicial decisions become precedents that infect every later case, and then those cases take things even farther and create more bad precedents until we are left with nothing resembling the original intent of the words of the US Constitution.
Another failure is the State’s having ELECTED judges and even sometime in their own Supreme State Courts. That means, like politicians, they must rule with what the majority of the people want, and not what is logical or Constitutional.
That’s a very simple explanation for a very complex problem, but it gives some people a starting point of how this all happened to us, and will happen to another group someday in the future.
I love it when judges use the word “PUNISHMENT”!!! 👍👍👍