A man who exposed himself near a Grandville mall and later took video of a woman in a Tanger Outlet Mall changing room is heading to prison for what could be the rest of his life. Full Article
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KS: ‘Denial of justice’ to delay Kansas Supreme Court rulings for eight months, justice says
A Kansas Supreme Court justice accused his colleagues of denying justice by delaying a series of opinions for eight months after they were decided, a tactic that changed the court’s precedent and accentuated the sway a single justice’s appointment can have. Full Article
Read MoreNY: PFML sues a poor man from another state in retaliation for Internet comments
The Suffolk nonprofit hired by the county to monitor registered sex offenders has sued a Cincinnati registered sex offender, accusing him of defaming the group with his online posts. Full Article
Read MorePA: Supreme Court to hear registration appeals from 3 sex offenders
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals by three convicted child molesters, including a Harrisburg man and a former Lancaster County teacher, who claim they wrongly are being forced to register with state police for life. Full Article
Read MoreIn a single day, the Kansas Supreme Court issues important constitutional opinions — and overrules them (Opinion)
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. On Friday the Kansas Supreme Court issued decisions in three cases — State v. Buser, State v. Redmond and Doe v. Thompson — holding that Kansas’s Offender Registration Act, requiring anyone previously convicted of various violent felonies, drug crimes or sex offenses to register with state authorities, cannot be constitutionally applied to people whose underlying felony convictions occurred before enactment of the registration statute in 2011. Full Op-Ed Piece Related KS: Sex offenders win and lose in unusual rulings by…
Read MoreNJ: Is it time to revisit and revamp Megan’s Law in NJ?
A peculiar thing — actually, two —happened on the way to banning New Jersey sex offenders from social media sites. First, the proposal was scaled back over concerns it wasn’t legal. Then, lawmakers heard from a lawyer whose practice is focused on Megan’s Law cases who says New Jersey law in this area is misdirected and merits a top-to-bottom re-evaluation by a task force to make sure it’s effective. Full Article
Read MoreVT: High court orders re-evaluation of sex offender’s conditions
MONTPELIER — The Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday that some conditions placed on a convicted sex offender were overbroad and in some cases too restrictive because they weren’t specifically connected to his crime. Full Article
Read MoreSD: A second chance for sex offenders
South Dakota’s sex offenders were given a new avenue to get off the state registry, but few have taken the path to clearing their name. According to legislation passed in July 2010, sex offenders are placed into three tiers dependent upon their offenses. If they follow their treatment programs and don’t re-offend, people in the first and second tier are eligible to get off the sex offender registry entirely. Full Article
Read MoreKS: Sex offenders win and lose in unusual rulings by the Kansas Supreme Court
In an apparently unprecedented series of rulings, the Kansas Supreme Court on Friday overruled three of its own Friday opinions regarding state sex offender registration laws. In three separate opinions issued Friday, the court found 2011 changes to the sex offender registry law cannot be applied retroactively to offenders convicted before the law took effect. But then in a fourth opinion also released Friday, the court found that those rulings were incorrect. Full Article State v. Petersen-Beard: Decision – Oral Argument Video State v. Buser: Decision – Oral Argument Video Doe v. Thompson: Decision…
Read MoreHow can a sex offender be rehabilitated if following the rules does not count? (Letter to the Editor)
West Virginia lawmakers, upon discovering that a young man working as a legislative intern was on the sex offender registry, promptly fired him and are now revising the hiring process to prevent a registrant from being hired in the future. Full Letter Background Lawmakers to overhaul intern rules after sex offender hired
Read MoreWA: Time to revisit sex offender registration act
We see a recent state Supreme Court ruling on the public release of registered sex offenders as victory and a defeat. We are adamant proponents for access to public records and champion the critical role of that information to make sure our government and public agencies are being fair and just. When the state Supreme Court ruled that Donna Zink was entitled to access to information about thousands of low-level sex offenders, it overturned rulings of lower courts preventing the release of that data. Full Editorial Related WA: Supreme Court – Records…
Read MoreMO: Sex-offender status poses a housing challenge for ill Army veteran
Army veteran Paul King struggles to find a place to call home. Shackled with poor health and a sexual-abuse conviction, King has seen his life deteriorate. Nearly blind and with failing kidneys, the 45-year-old King, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, has been in and out of hospitals over the past eight months. He lives in Peaceful Pines residential-care facility in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. The small facility can house 20 residents. “I feel like I have been left here to die,” he said during a visit with his sister, Carol…
Read MoreWI: Sex offenders branded for life
____ ____ is a convicted sex offender who cannot escape his past. The 44-year-old Fond du Lac man served five years in prison for sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in 1991. He was 19 years old when he forced her to have sex with him, court records indicate. Full Article
Read MoreME: 10 years after sex offender murders, questions linger about Maine’s registry
One morning in March, Bangor Police Detective Jeremy Brock and Officer Dustin Dow made their rounds. Two of their stops included the Ranger Inn on outer Hammond Street and a boarding house on Union Street. Each week, Brock usually spends a day on such visits, checking that the 120 or so registered sex offenders in Bangor are living where they have said they’re living. … Little has changed in the registry despite the events of 10 years ago, when two Maine men listed on the registry were murdered by someone…
Read MoreME: This sex assault victim says the offender registry listing is more important to her than prison time
For Tina Dionne, it’s more important for the man who sexually assaulted her as a child to register as a sex offender than serve time in prison. Full Article
Read MoreNY: WE NEED TO RETURN POWER TO LOCAL GOV’T TO PROTECT OUR COMMUNITIES FROM SEX OFFENDERS
(Long Island, NY) Assemblyman Dean Murray (R,C,I- East Patchogue) hosted a press conference today to highlight the need to fix laws pertaining to the sex offender registry to help keep our children and communities safe. Since the start of 2016, some level one sex offenders have been removed from the registry, while a State Appeals Court decision last year removed all local restrictions on where convicted sex offenders may reside. He was joined by his Assembly colleagues and Paul Alonzo, Program Manager of Parents for Megan’s Law. “In February 2015,…
Read MoreCO: Supreme court says towns can ban sex offenders
Can a municipality pass an ordinance that effectively bans any registered sex offender from living there? That was the issue in Ryals v. City of Englewood, which the Colorado Supreme Court decided recently. Full Column Opinion
Read MoreMN: Appeals court hears challenge to constitutionality of Minnesota Sex Offender Program
A federal appeals court in St. Louis heard oral arguments Tuesday about whether the state of Minnesota’s sex offender treatment program violates the Constitution with its practice of indefinite detention. The case before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals could force the state to make a series of politically unpopular reforms to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), which has come under fire for its failure to release more offenders into the community. Full Article
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