Source: reason.com 8/20/24 From Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Rokita, decided Friday by Judges Frank Easterbrook and Amy St. Eve: Indiana seeks a stay of the preliminary injunction that a district court entered preventing the enforcement of Ind. Code § 24-4-23, which requires web sites to limit minors’ access to certain sexual materials. Indiana’s statute is functionally identical to one adopted by Texas. That statute has been held to be valid [by the Fifth Circuit, though the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case]. Free Speech Coalition, Inc., which…
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IL: New Illinois law clarifies rules on AI-generated child pornography
Source: myjournalcourier.com 8/13/24 Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed into law legislation clarifying that Illinois’ existing child pornography laws apply to images and videos created using artificial intelligence technology. “I initiated this legislation because AI-generated child sexual abuse images are an increasing concern that need to be addressed before technology outpaces our ability to distinguish between AI images and images of real children,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in announcing the signing. State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz and Sen. Mary Edly-Allen sponsored House Bill 4623, which prohibits using artificial intelligence to create…
Read MoreNC: Appeals court rejects challenge to North Carolina sex offender registration law
Source: portcitydaily.com 8/12/24 Three judges on the Fourth Circuit of Appeals unanimously upheld the constitutionality of North Carolina’s sex offender registry statute against a lawsuit from two organizations based in the state. The National Association for Rational Sexual Offense Laws, headquartered in Raleigh, and its state-affiliate North Carolina for Rational Sexual Offense Laws joined anonymous plaintiffs John Doe 1 and 2 in the case. Plaintiffs first sued in 2017 to challenge amendments in the state’s sex offender registration statute and reduce sex offender restrictions and the length of registration terms.…
Read MoreYouTuber MrBeast Accused of Hiring Registered Sex Offender
Source: thedailybeast 8/12/24 The top YouTuber announced several company-wide changes in a leaked memo that were precipitated by an ongoing internal investigation. It’s a bad time to be MrBeast. A few weeks ago, YouTube’s highest paid content creator, real name Jimmy Donaldson, was caught up in scandal after one of his longtime collaborators, Ava Kris Tyson, was accused of sending explicit messages to a 13-year-old girl when she was 20. Now, a former employee’s claimed MrBeast “knowingly” hired a registered sex offender to work on his $54-million-a-year channel. The person…
Read MoreKS: After investigation into numerous felonies, Kansas AG charges prosecutor with two misdemeanors
Source: newsfromthestates.com 8/9/24 TOPEKA — The Kansas Attorney General’s Office charged a rural Kansas prosecutor with two financial misdemeanors, but not alleged sexual extortion or other felonies that local and state law enforcement investigated. A complaint filed Thursday in state court accuses Neosho County Attorney Linus Thuston of violating the Retailers’ Sales Tax Act in 2021 and misuse of public funds in 2019. Thuston has been the county attorney, an elected position, since 2012. Thuston didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story. Neosho County Sheriff Greg Taylor…
Read MoreEmbracing the Public’s Ideas to Improve Sentencing, Commission Unanimously Adopts Policy Priorities
Source: ussc.gov 8/8/24 Priorities Reflect Calls to Simplify Sentencing, Reduce the Costs of Unnecessary Incarceration, and Promote Public Safety WASHINGTON, D.C. — Each year, the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission votes to adopt priorities that will guide its annual policymaking process. This summer, the Commission solicited priorities from the public, asking how the agency can improve federal sentencing. In response, the Commission received more than 1,200 pages of insightful comments from judges, members of Congress, executive branch officials, probation officers, advisory groups, attorneys, professors, advocates, organizations, incarcerated individuals, and others. Today,…
Read More‘Too Much Law’ Gives Prosecutors Enormous Power To Ruin People’s Lives
Source: reason.com 8/7/24 In a new book, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch describes the “human toll” of proliferating criminal penalties. “Criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in 2019. Gorsuch elaborates on that theme in a new book, showing how the proliferation of criminal penalties has given prosecutors enormous power to ruin people’s lives, resulting in the nearly complete replacement of jury trials with plea bargains. “Some scholars peg…
Read MoreWhen the Prison Grievance Process Is Worth the Risk
Source: filtermag.org 8/5/24 For nearly three decades, I’ve been hearing people scream for help. Screams of people being raped, robbed, stabbed. Screams of people left freezing in paper gowns in a suicide watch cell. Screams of people simply forgotten about behind these concrete walls. Prisons are filled with people screaming, but there’s no one besides us to hear them. We lose many rights in prison, but legally we still have basic civil rights like protection from abuse. And when we suffer abuse anyway, we have the right to seek justice…
Read MoreCongressional Democrats Take Aim at For-Profit Probation, Electronic Monitoring Companies
Source: theappeal.org 7/23/24 A group of nearly 20 federal lawmakers sent letters to two companies this week calling out abusive industry practices and requesting additional information about their profits, policies, and contracts with local governments. In letters sent Tuesday to Sentinel Offender Services, a for-profit probation contractor, and Attenti Group, an electronic monitoring services provider, more than a dozen congressional Democrats excoriated the companies for allegedly abusive industry practices that heap debt onto vulnerable people who are already living in poverty. The lawmakers have given the companies an Aug. 8…
Read MoreLessons learned? I believe I was the target of a police sting – Atwo Zee
Source: Florida Action Committee By Atwo Zee, Registered Traveler . . . Not long after I returned to Iowa after the 2024 NARSOL conference in Atlanta, I received an email forwarded by the national NARSOL office. This message came to them on their main “Contact Us” email address, and whoever sent it was looking specifically for me, “whose story “Unwanted Images” hit home when I was suicidal and wracked with fear …” The sender also complimented my travel blog and expressed a desire to have me participate in a podcast…
Read MoreR. Kelly hopes key technicality will move Supreme Court justices to overturn convictions for sexually abusing teenage girls in the 1990s
Source: lawandcrime.com 7/30/24 Robert Sylvester Kelly, the R&B singer better known as R. Kelly, is looking to overturn his Illinois federal convictions for child pornography and the sexual abuse of teenage girls by making the case to the U.S. Supreme Court that Congress, when extending the statute of limitations on such offenses in 2003, did not “expressly” intend to retroactively punish him for conduct going back to the 1990s. Read the full article
Read MoreEfforts to release prisoners from long sentences draw new interest, including in Oklahoma
Source: duncanbanner.com 7/31/24 Lawmakers across the country have considered legislation this year that would allow courts or parole boards to reevaluate a person’s long prison sentence and decide whether they can be safely released into society. The bills, known as “second look” legislation, often focus on older populations, people sentenced as minors, or those whose crimes might have had a mitigating factor such as self-defense against domestic violence. As America’s prison population both ages and increases, the “second look” movement has gained interest as a way to reduce overcrowding and…
Read MoreMI: Michigan Supreme Court decision will likely strike hundreds from sex-offender registry
Source: apnews.com 7/29/24 DETROIT (AP) — Michigan’s policy of putting people on a sex-offender registry even if their crime was nonsexual is unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court said Monday. In a 5-2 decision, the court said a portion of a 2021 law is “cruel or unusual punishment” barred by the Michigan Constitution. A Wayne County man in 2015 was convicted of holding his wife and two children at gunpoint for hours. After his release from prison, he would face 15 years on the sex-offender registry because his unlawful-imprisonment conviction involved…
Read MoreBloated federal supervision system makes everyone less safe
Source: thehill.com 6/1/24 More released convicts living under the watchful eye of a probation officer means safer communities, right? Wrong. Big government has tainted the criminal justice system. This includes federal supervised release, which is failing everyone it is supposed to help, from taxpayers to law enforcement officers to those trying to rebuild their lives after prison. The Safer Supervision Act before Congress would restore federal supervision to its intended scope and purpose, create safer communities and use taxpayer money more responsibly. Congress originally established federal supervised release to help people “transition…
Read MoreThe Quiet Epidemic of Predators in Uniforms
Source: slate.com 7/23/24 A series of recent groundbreaking investigative reports unveiled what many advocates for police accountability have known for decades: Child sex abuse by law enforcement officials is far too common across our country. Systemic failures within policing—coupled with lax oversight by police departments, prosecutors, and judges—too often shield police officers from meaningful accountability. Child sex abuse is chronic and widespread, yet justice for survivors is rare. Studies have found that nearly 25 percent of girls and roughly 8 percent of boys experience sexual abuse before turning 18. Numerous…
Read MoreCO: Colorado Jail Guard Must Stand Trial for Opening Accused Sex Offender’s Cell, Subjecting Him to Assault
Source: prisonlegalnews.org 7/1/24 On December 13, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado denied summary judgment to a jail guard who allegedly failed to protect a pretrial detainee from assault by another detainee. But the Court dismissed a municipal liability claim against Colorado’s Chaffee County, even though the guard had been disciplined before—three times—for failing to keep cell doors locked. Jason Harter, then 34, was arrested and booked into Chaffee County Detention Center (CCDC) on February 20, 2020, on charges of kidnapping, forcible rape of an individual…
Read MoreSenate To Vote on Web Censorship Bill Disguised as Kids Safety
Source: reason.com 7/24/24 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) will force a vote this week on the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a measure certain to seriously restrict free speech and privacy online for everyone. The meat of the bipartisan bill is creating a “duty of care” for a huge swath of digital companies (any “online platform, online video game, messaging application, or video streaming service that connects to the internet and that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, by a minor”). This means they’re legally required…
Read MoreRI: Cranston YMCA employee fired for letting sex offender on grounds
Source: wpri.com 5/16/24 The YMCA of Greater Providence (GPYMCA) fired an employee earlier this month after learning she allowed a registered sex offender on the premises. The former employee worked for the aquatics program at the Cranston branch and the sex offender is her fiancé, GPYMCA CEO Karen Santilli told 12 News on Thursday. Watch the video
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