Source: Jason Schmidt on observertoday.com 11/2/24
[Jason Schmidt is Chautauqua County district attorney]I write to clarify and correct the public record created by recent reporting and editorial comment on my efforts to obtain “Sexually Violent Offender” designations for certain convicted sex offenders under New York’s Sex Offender Registration Act (“SORA”).
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One critical designation under SORA is that of “Sexually Violent Offender,” a classification which recognizes the inherent violent nature of certain sex crimes, many of which concern sexual assaults committed against children, by requiring lifetime registration, increased monitoring by law enforcement, and disclosures to the public — all heightened safeguards designed to protect communities from the risks and dangers posed by the threat of repeat violent sex offenders. Without such a designation, the registration requirements enabling us to track a convicted violent sex offender will eventually expire or be judicially terminated at which point that person’s whereabouts and activities can no longer be monitored by law enforcement; that individual will, in effect, disappear into the community and from our collective view unless and until they later reoffend – a worst-case scenario to be avoided to the best of our abilities under existing law. For these reasons, the Sexually Violent Offender designation is a critically important tool in our legal efforts to prevent these persons from causing further harm in Chautauqua County and elsewhere.
All of these concerns and considerations are at play when an out-of-state sex offender relocates into our county. In that situation, he or she is required to register as a Sex Offender in the state and it is then on me and my office to seek the appropriate risk-level classification and designations described above, necessitating that we obtain records of the sex offender’s underlying out-of-state convictions. In some instances, due to the passage of time and/or another state’s inadequate document retention policies, we’re unable to obtain complete records of a sex offender’s underlying convictions and are therefore not able to present the full nature and extent of the crimes that person committed and harm caused to his or her victims before he or she came to live among us. But this does not mean that we throw up our hands and concede that this critical designation doesn’t apply.
To the contrary, given the extreme risks presented to the community when an out-of-state sex offender relocates into the County to live among us and our families, it is incumbent upon law enforcement to take the very opposite approach of what your editorial urges; that is, to utilize all legally-available means to obtain the Sexually Violent Offender designation, because this imposes the heightened protections necessary to reduce, as much as we are able, the potential for an offender to harm again. To act otherwise, for me, is unacceptable. I and my office are always going to make use of the limited (and in my personal view, inadequate) tools provided to law enforcement by our representatives in Albany to fight for the full extent of legal protections safeguarding our residents and their families.
The import of your editorial suggests that, in aggressively seeking Sexually Violent Offender designations, I am, in effect, repeatedly banging my head against the wall without success and at the expense of the County. That’s just plain wrong. Prior to the Appellate Division’s recent ruling which we vigorously opposed, and which apparently inspired your editorial, NY courts were legally required to apply this designation to those offenders whose out-of-state convictions were for registerable felony-level crimes. This is the legal basis on which we relied to successfully fight for and obtain many Sexually Violent Offender designations despite the shoddy record-keeping practices of other states. Unfortunately, that’s now been taken away as an end-result of the Appellate Division’s recent ruling.
Those designations are now considered unconstitutional and in violation of each sex offender’s Due Process rights unless we can prove that the out-of-state convictions satisfy NY’s requirements for sexually violent felony designation.
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Essentially, the D.A. is complaining and throwing a little tantrum/hissy fit because they can’t just arbitrarily slap the “Sexually Violent Predator” label onto every PFR living there… in fact, I would imagine that a number of those who are currently designated as such, are neither violent nor predatory at all. Note the brash assumption he makes that every single individual who committed a “sex offense” (even if it was decades ago), will “inevitably” do so again if Big Brother isn’t “keeping a close eye on them” for the rest of their life:
Like so many others, he couldn’t care less about the mountains of data proving the complete opposite of his baseless and arrogant assumptions. In spite of all evidence, he would never acknowledge that PFRs are, in fact, the least likely to reoffend, and that the vast majority of new sex crimes are committed by those not on any registry, and by individuals who know and are very close to their victims… in other words, anyone who is potentially a “predator” is already living in that community at this very moment, completely undetected, and is probably well respected and unassuming (i.e parents, educators, coaches, counselors, social workers, doctors, community leaders, LE, etc.)
I, for one, truly hope that every PFR can “disappear into the community and from the collective view”, so that they can simply get on with their life in peace and quiet.
Well, isn’t that a shame? A NY DA unable to step on the backs of Registrants for his future power grab to become President.
There doesn’t appear to be an area for comments on the article, but I would like to know what evidence there is that this approach works. He should cite facts and data. How many people / children have they saved from harm by applying this label, lifetime registration, and all the other monitoring and expense that he believes is necessary? Have sex offense crimes diminished in his county since the advent of these labels and the registry? How many crimes have been solved because of this label and lifetime registration? The burden of proof should always be on the government when taking away people’s rights.
He doesn’t understand the consequences of his position and how these labels and all the rest weaken the civil rights for everyone. He won’t understand until he sees it firsthand in his family, but he will. It’s only a matter of time before everyone is within Kevin Bacon degrees of impacted by this unconstitutional overreach – and it may just be he himself who makes the list.
He even stupidly admitted that it was not needed with his “unless and until they later reoffend”. Why would you need to continually monitor someone for the rest of their life unless you have proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will be a continued threat? If they are a continued threat why are they released from prison?
I am inclined to question why he is worried about a group of former felons(and miscreants) that have a less than 5% re-offense rate disappearing into the community when they “time out”, but not concerned with the miscreants and felons with re-offense rates of 33%(thieves/robbers) and 66%(drunk drivers) even though the drunk drivers cause children and adults to die by the hundreds every year.
What he laments is that he and his assistants have a harder time padding their resumes with the easiest felony convictions to obtain.
The courts decision on this may be found here.
The court recognized that designating one who is not an SVP an SVP simply because they committed their non violent crime out of state instead of in New York is unconstitutional because it isn’t rational. State law says all out of state sex convictions are violent even if they wouldn’t have been if committed in New York.
The one thing that sticks out is that the court says the registry itself is sufficient to warn the public about a non violent out of state conviction so therefore adding a label of SVP to them for the sole reason being that they are from out of state is irrational and violated the due process right of the out of state PFR to require the state to prove that the PFR is a SVP.
For the most part New York can get the information the need to determine if someone should be labeled an SVP and this DA is full of crap. In fact in this case it wasn’t really even a question if they had that information but this DA wanted the SVP label on this PFR anyway. This DA just wants to get off on labeling people SVP.
I love the title for this. And the “Read additional whining here” link.
That is the way we need to treat a**hole terrorists like Chautauqua County district attorney Jason Schmidt. I’m over these douche bags. They need to take their little fantasy Registry harassment scheme and move to some POS country where their kind will fit in better. It has no place is a free, decent country, which is what Amerika could be some day.
In honor of a**hole terrorists like Schmidt, I do an awesome job actually every single day of ensuring that their Registries are completely worthless and do nothing of value. Nearly on a daily basis, I’m closely around and with people, including children, who have no idea that I’m a PFR, a pariah. Not a clue.
The a**holes should get a load of what I did on Halloween too. I was mingling, anonymously, among actually hundreds of children. It was quite a horrific Halloween for all.
This is probably one of those guys who likes to waste tax dollars keeping people who live outside of the country on their registration.