Please join Janice Bellucci and ACSOL President Chance Oberstein, a criminal defense attorney, for our next phone meeting. The conference call will be on Saturday, April 20 at 10 am Pacific Time (1:00 Eastern) and will last from 2 to 3 hours. Topics of conversation will include information about the domestic and overseas travel, the Tiered Registry, residency restrictions and other current topics as well as pending legal action throughout the nation. Please Show up, Stand up, and Speak up! Dial-in number: 1-712-770-8055 Conference Code: 983459 To ask a question,…
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AZ: Stringer fallout halts sex offender registry reform
[eacourier.com – 4/11/19] Legislation that would make more people eligible to have their names removed from Arizona’s sex offender registry may end up being an inadvertent casualty of the recent revelations of decades-old sex crime allegations that led David Stringer to resign from the Arizona House of Representatives. House Speaker Rusty Bowers, R-Mesa, sponsored House Bill 2613, which he crafted with assistance from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The bill would expand the list of crimes for which sex offenders could petition to be removed from the registry, while…
Read MoreWA: Washington Sexting Bill Aims to Shield Teens From Adult Law
[usnews.com – 4/11/19] Legislation aimed at keeping youth who send sexually explicit texts from being charged under adult sex crime laws has cleared the Legislature in Washington state. The bill , which passed late Wednesday night, would create a new group of crimes reserved specifically for minors who are caught with explicit images of other minors, attempting to solve what lawmakers described as a paradox in current law, where even youth who report a sexual picture or video can themselves be potentially charged with a felony — and even forced…
Read MoreCA: Appeals court strikes down state law that banned early parole for youthful violent sex offenders
[sfchronicle.com – 4/10/19] Two men who received life sentences for a brutal sexual assault and robbery in Oakland when they were 19 must be given parole hearings during their 25th year in prison, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday, striking down a state law that made them ineligible. A California law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, one of a series of laws reducing mandatory penalties for youthful offenders, allowed those serving potential life terms for crimes committed when they were 25 or under to be considered for…
Read MorePA: Constitutional right or crime? Case of alleged harassment of sex offender’s family heads to court
[lehighvalleylive.com – 4/9/19] A father and son from Freemansburg accused of harassing the family of a sex offender are headed to Northampton County Court on their respective criminal charges. James Forte Sr. and James Forte Jr., who both live in 200 block of Juniata Street in the borough, had their preliminary hearings Tuesday in front of District Judge Nicholas Englesson. Following testimony from the victim and a borough police officer, Englesson sent all the charges to county court, where the pair now face possible trial. false Father and son accused…
Read MoreEarly Bird Discount for ACSOL Conference Ends April 15
The early bird discount for tickets to the two-day ACSOL conference ends on April 15. That means the cost of a ticket will increase from $90 to $100. It’s easy to take advantage of this bargain online or by mailing payment to ACSOL at its Sacramento address — 1215 K Street, 17th Floor, Sacramento, CA 95814. The third annual ACSOL conference will feature both national and local experts who will provide solid recommendations regarding how to improve your life on the registry with regard to employment, housing, travel and social…
Read MorePublic Safety Committees Stop AB 884, Pass SB 145
The Assembly’s Public Safety Committee today, by a vote of 3 to 4, stopped Assembly Bill 884. Due to the committee’s vote, AB 884 will not receive further consideration. “This is a great victory for more than 40,000 people who would have been moved from Tier 2, which requires 20 years of registration, to Tier 3, which requires lifetime registration, when the Tiered Registry Law takes effect,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “This positive result came about because more than 75 people testified today in opposition to the bill.”…
Read MorePA: High Court will again review sex offender registration
Two years ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shook up long-settled orthodoxy by ruling that the state’s sex offender registration law, otherwise known as SORNA (Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act) was punishment. The case, Commonwealth v. Muniz, 164 A.3d 1189 (Pa. 2018), presented the Court with two questions: whether people who committed their crimes before the adoption of the law could continue to be registered without running afoul of the state Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause, a fairness doctrine that prevents governments from retroactively applying greater punishments to conduct than…
Read MoreColombia
Colombia Travel to Colombia on [21] by Air – Entry was: Denied Submitted by: America’s Most Hated Registration Status Registration State: Mississippi – Currently Registered: Yes – Listed on Public Web Site: Yes Visa Visa Required: No [if 25] – Explanation provided:[/if 25] [25] Advance Notice Advance Notice provided: Yes – Adv. Notice required by State Law: Yes Advance Notice Comments: Reported via travel form at state DPS driver license office Offense Info Offense Level: Felony – Conviction expunged: No – Offense involving Minor: Yes – Passport Identifier: No Result Entry…
Read MoreInternational Travel 2019
This post is intended as a place for discussions about International Travel ONLY. We added a new post for this year in order to keep the discussion manageable. For more information and previous discussions on the topic, please see the pages in the International Travel menu named International Travel [year number] Click here for the latest International Travel Information and Resources
Read MoreKat’s Blog: Living in the Gray Zone
A local “sex offender treatment group” recently had a guest speaker from the sheriff’s office. He was there to speak about the do’s and don’ts of the registry. My first thought was “shouldn’t everyone in group have been informed of the do’s and don’ts when they were first put on the registry? Isn’t that when registrants should be provided with all the information they will need to be informed registrants? Instead, they wait till the registrants are all assembled in a treatment group that the registrants are paying for to…
Read MoreLA: After admitting sex with 3 boys, substitute teacher spared jail and barred from class only two years
[usatoday.com – 4/5/19] After pleading guilty to having sex with three underage teenagers and sending lewd messages, a substitute teacher in Louisiana was spared jail and could even be headed back to the classroom, New Orlean’s station WDSU reports. As part of a plea deal, 34-year-old ______ pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of carnal knowledge of a juvenile and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. When she was arrested in 2016, the Terrebonne Parish instructor faced three felony charges, according to the report. A…
Read MoreLiving with 290: Success Story – Certificate of Rehabilitation and Removal from the CA Registry
I want to share a success story of overcoming the confines of being a registrant, and the practical steps I took. Of course, every case is different. On February 22, 2018, I was granted a Certificate of Rehabilitation and relieved of the duty of having to register. After 11 years, the oppression was lifted just like that. After I gathered my jaw from the floor, I went down to the court cafeteria and just sat there. Pondering what just happened and the new possibilities. I was convicted of an “Attempted…
Read MoreIA: Iowa Supreme Court rules requiring sex offenders to report social media presence is not a First Amendment violation
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that requiring sex offenders to disclose their social media identities and other digital information does not violate their free speech rights. Five of the seven justices agreed that the requirement, part of the state’s sex offender registry, was put in place a decade ago to protect children and victims from possible abuse but was not a “proxy for content regulations.” Justice Thomas Waterman’s opinion emphasized that sex offenders aren’t required to disclose their passwords and aren’t prevented from participating in social media. Full Article Opinion
Read MoreAustralia: A public register of child sex offenders will do more harm than good
[smh.com.au – 4/4/19] If politicians are looking for a sure fire vote winner then anything that punishes people convicted of sex offences does the trick. So there is likely to be little resistance to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s budget announcement of $7.8 million to establish a National Public Register of Child Sex Offenders. Dutton is proposing that this register would allow all Australians to see names, aliases and photographs of sex offenders, as well as their date of birth, physical description and the “general location and nature” of…
Read MoreCanada: Sex-offender registry laws discriminate against mentally ill, court rules
[theprovince.com – 4/4/19] Parts of federal and Ontario laws requiring sex-offender registration where an accused is granted an absolute discharge after being found not criminally responsible discriminate against the mentally ill and are therefore unconstitutional, Ontario’s top court ruled Thursday. While the court ordered information belonging to the man who brought the case to be deleted immediately from sex-offender registries, the justices also gave governments 12 months to fix the offending legislation, widely known in Ontario as Christopher’s Law. “Persons found (not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder)…
Read MoreProsecutors Dropping Child Porn Charges After Software Tools Are Questioned
[propublica.org – 4/3/19] Using specialized software, investigators traced explicit child pornography to Todd Hartman’s internet address. A dozen police officers raided his Los Angeles-area apartment, seized his computer and arrested him for files including a video of a man ejaculating on a 7-year-old girl. But after his lawyer contended that the software tool inappropriately accessed Hartman’s private files, and asked to examine how it worked, prosecutors dismissed the case. Near Phoenix, police with a similar detection program tracked underage porn photos, including a 4-year-old with her legs spread, to…
Read MoreAction Alert: AB 884 and SB 145 hearing on April 9 [4/8 UPDATE]
4/9/19 UPDATE: the Assembly Public Safety Committee–which will still be hearing AB 884 at 10:00 am on 4/9–announced they are changing the room number to Room 4202. 4/4/19 UPDATE: the Senate Public Safety Committee–which will be hearing SB 145–announced they are meeting at 8:30 am. That means we will meet at Starbucks from 7:30 am to 8:00 and walk over at 8:00. Both the SB 145 and AB 884 hearings are still meeting on April 9. The Assembly Public Safety Committee–which will be hearing AB 884–is still after 10:00 am.…
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