There are two significant dates about to converge in a few days. Both offer independence to some, but not all.
The first of the two dates is July 1 when some registrants in California will be able to petition for the first time their removal from the registry. The size of this group will expand during the next 12 months when eligible registrants celebrate their birthdays. That is because otherwise eligible registrants must wait until their first birthday on or after July 1 in order to submit their petitions.
There are many problems with the Tiered Registry Law. The focus of this column, however, is not upon those problems. Instead, its focus is upon the opportunities available to hundreds if not thousands of individuals who will successfully petition for removal this year. This means that there will be a significantly lower number of people who are punished by society solely because they are required to register.
I urge you to take time to celebrate this moment. A moment many of us have been waiting for more than 10 years when the first Tiered Registry Law was introduced.
Although imperfect, the current Tiered Registry Law is the key to freedom for many people. And that key will be made available to many more people as we continue to challenge its imperfections in court and lobby for necessary changes in the state capitol.
If you are not included in the group of individuals eligible to petition for removal from the registry this year, I hope that you can cheer on those who are eligible. To be grateful for their freedom.
What better time of year to celebrate the freedom of these registrants than July 4, the day our nation celebrates its freedom?
I wish everyone the best of luck with their petition!!
I’ve been on the registry since the mid 80’s and even though I qualify to get off the internet, it brings little comfort. In my 30+ years of registration, I have seen my life go from a happy outspoken successful person dwindle down to a depression filled unemployed anti-social mess. Damage has been done. It’s still going to be hard to get a job or live somewhere because my offense (288a) will still be popping up on background checks everywhere. Only comfort is anybody new in my life will not be able to look me up unless they use a background check service. Not excited at all about having to go through another court process and I am in no hurry to get my name taken off the website.
The nature of my case pegs me to Tier 3 for life, but, man oh man, I’m so thrilled to know that many of my fellow registrants will enjoy the chance to finally wake from this nightmare. To those who have helped fight this battle, thank you, and God bless you. To those who will benefit, I know you’ll use this new lease life to live your lives to the fullest free of extra-legal entanglements and prove to the world that you never needed to be on the cursed registry in the first place. Your success improves the chance that those of use who remain on the public registry will one day enjoy freedom, as well.
United States Supreme court Judge Thomas has an opinion about the the state of contrarian Federal Law enforcement. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/84/
Their are some revealing statements about the fiat state of being of our current law and Law enforcement policies regarding one type of criminality- marijuana possession. Certainly this topic seems off target on this forum, and Yet the sex offender listed on a state registry too suffers the untenable rule of fiat. The are too as Tomas puts it, ” half in – half out. ” Either free men are paid wages to maintain machines of they are not. Welcome to binary life.
I have 2 failure to register charges can I still petition for removal after 20 years ?
I will celebrate quietly when I am off. No offense , but I don’t celebrate other people’s accomplishments, and I don’t expect anyone to celebrate mine. I liken it to congratulating the guy next to you for surviving the firing squad as you bleed to death from your wounds.
I have a question for the legal people. If I leave the state for a while and then return does my counter start over or does it start where is left off?
May those who are removed never be a recidivism statistic as is occasionally seen around the country by those with a prior registering offense.
May you make the single digit rate currently used go LOWER to the lowest of every data point noted when statistics are calculated.
May you make “frightening and high” more of a misnomer than it already is and shove it back onto the courts as the truly piss-poor data it is to begin with.
Don’t be a first one who slips. Go forth proving the encouraging masses correct and prove the doubting masses wrong. No pressure here, but failure is not an option.
May you make the best of the new found emancipated freedom and fight for those not able to join you…yet. They will need you.
“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul” – Moshe Dayan
An excellent point to reflect on, Janice! There is now potentially real freedom for many registrants. 😃🤗
I still have not received any notification (letter) stating what tier I am. When should i expect to receive it? “California”
Something tells me the CA list is about to get a lot darker after July. I see a list of black and brown photos disproportionately taking the lead on the website. Look at the rioter was claimed police were ‘protecting pedophiles’ as he stormed the Capitol Building on Jan 6th who had an arrest in CA for statuary rape of a minor in 2010 and is not listed on the CA website. Why is that? Some laws apply to a few that don’t apply to others. The tiered system is going to be a scam to set some free of this curse while the usual suspects remain. Some get a slap on the wrist, while others get slammed.
Will ACSOL or CASOMB be tracking all the people who attempt to get off the registry? That way we can see the success rate or denied rate from the state and county levels. Also, see the reason why a person was denied from relief, aside from not being able to qualify for relief.
We could also track for the equality judgement per registerable offense.
It’s just a thought to help make sure that all registrants are treated equally from county to county, per registerable offense, in case there are some registrants who are denied or delayed justice.
Oh, also, track the time between submitting a petition to a court date as well as time from being granted relief at that court date to being taken off the DOJ registry.
Again, Janice, Chance, and all of ACSOL, thank you very much for all you do!
Good luck and grats to everyone that can get off this bs, keep your head clean and remember if you do get off some states have laws that will put you back on if you cross into state line. keep your vacation money out of their states. I stick to my own state for fear of messing up somewhere just by entering, maybe being to cautions but done is done, never catch me on this bs again.
Freedom isn’t freedom until we’re all free. The tiered registry does more harm than help by giving a false sense of progress. While some have a chance of being removed from the registry with the tiered registry, more are losing the opportunity as removal with a CoR is no longer possible.
As you stated Janice, it’s not perfect but so much better than what we had. Thank you so much for all of your hard work!
How many are waking up today realizing they have nothing to lose and that has been the status quo for years, maybe decades? I suspect this is true even for thousands who are able to petition for removal. Too little, too late. At what cost freedom?
As the old song goes, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
While “independence for some” rings with ‘solidarity’ It carries the message that if there aren’t enough life boats, no one should be in one.
Even before the tiered registry some offenses allowed a process for a certificate of rehabilitation while others, like mine, explicitly were denied that path. There were no legal procedings, no cries of unfair. We trudged on.
Can someone answer me this? Does the clock start from date of conviction or date of release? Thank you.
Congrats to the ones able to petition off the registry. You made it. My prayers go out to the tiered 3’s we are all in this together!! We truly reflect upon one another. If any person reflects upon another person it is this group!! Thank you Janice and company for what you guys do for us! And thank you for this platform so we can try to encourage eachother! I hope I can petition in March. It will be 25 years of public ridicule and I’m a tier two. My only fear as that I or some of us will let our guard down bc the longer we get from registering the less it will be in our minds. We don’t have to reoffend to get thrown in jail now. That’s all that has to happen is for someone to mistakenly accuse us of wrong doing. This is already on our record. Complacency is our enemy so we have to keep our guard up. We all know it is possible to offend so put yourself in position to not offend. It’s the people who have not offended that are able to offend bc they don’t know its possible for anyone to offend. Since we know it is possible we have got to put ourselves in position to be successful and not reoffend. I don’t know if I’m making any sense. I want to thank every one of you men and women for helping me get through the hard days!!
what’s needed is to make a run at making these removals Federally recognized because this still makes us effectively imprisoned within the state borders after removal.
CONGRATS! Janice, this was your One Hundreth J Journal Entry!
100, that’s alot for a Volunteer leading the way and caring enough about others, Christlike, that comments and pays attention to bad media and news for our sake.
THANK YOU MS. BELLUCCI for all your comments, responses, replies and a personal JOURNAL We can all Read at our leisure! We appreciate your leadership, candor and thoughtfulness!
Do you ever feel like you are never getting ahead? When we first got involved with the registry, it was very frightening. I was not aware of how it worked, or what all the laws were about. He had to register once a year, and it was always nerve wrecking. Weeks prior to his registration, I suffer from panic attacks. I always go with him because it puts me more at ease, knowing and being part of the process. Every year, the day passes, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. A few times, we had compliance checks in between, and I know now that these are not mandated by any law, and I have called them out on it each time. I was courteous and nice to whoever I spoke to, and I received positive responses. Still, it takes me several takes to pick up the phone to call, but I can’t just sit here and let them think it’s ok. I know, they will still come for these checks, but it helps to know one’s rights. I have never had anything to do with Law Enforcement, but they do intimate me. Not because they are LE but because I know they can make your life miserable if they wanted to. It makes me angry since abusing one’s power should never be allowed, and they should be held responsible if they did. Back to my first sentence. We have been dealing with the registry for a long time, and I never supported it. It is unconstitutional, and if nothing else, a complete violation of human rights. We could deal with the annual registration, but we can’t and don’t want to deal with all the restrictions it comes with. We can’t even travel without fear of not knowing the law in a particular State. It’s not like the laws are uniform across the board. They vary from State to State, County to County. We are stripped of our right to travel peacefully. Now, we have the Tiered Registry, which seemed like a good idea for some. We have received the short straw with this new law, but we are still in the process of fighting it. He got assigned a Tier 3 based on the Static 99R that was never done to the best of our knowledge. He received a suspended sentence with probation and completed probation without an incident. His offense dates back to 2013. A Static 99R for those receiving probation would have had to be done pre-sentencing. Well, it was not done per our attorney and the former probation officer (I called both). I have been in touch with attorneys, and nobody seems to know how to challenge this Tier, which I believe has to be incorrect. This is why I feel like I can’t get ahead. For anything else, I can solve problems that arise, but when it comes to the DOJ, it seems like they are just not approachable. We really need to move forward with this, and I have all the supporting documents, supporting our case. Why is it so hard to correct a wrongdoing by the DOJ. The Static 99R was mandated for sentencing purposes since 2006, but some are not eligible to be scored. My fiance got sentenced in 2014, so if mandated, he should have received the Static 99R for sure, but he didn’t. My guess is he was not eligible to be scored, so he would not be eligible just for the Tier designation either. The DOJ can’t just arbitrarily assign scores at will. Plus, it would have to be done by a trained SARATSO scorer. Any advice is highly appreciated. He was never publicly listed, and he did not even fall into the “Exclusion” category. He was in the “Non Disclosed” category that, by law, can not be publicly listed. Thanks for “listening” and reading.
maybe someone on here can help me understand something
in 95 charged with arson and was told i had to register for life jump to 2003 filed for and was granted pc1203.4 now 2022 I’m being charged for not registering