The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families. In order to achieve that objective, ACSOL will educate and litigate as well as support or oppose legislation. The ACSOL website and recordings are provided as a service to registrants, registrants’ families, and others for general information only. The information on the website and in the recordings are not designed to provide legal or other advice or to create an attorney-client relationship. You should not take, or refrain from taking, action based on their content. Prior results and case studies do not guarantee a similar outcome in future representations. ACSOL accepts no responsibility for any loss or damages that may result from accessing or reliance on content on the ACSOL website and recordings and disclaim, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any and all liability with respect to acts or omissions made by registrants, registrants’ families and others on the basis of content on the ACSOL website.
Important News / Announcements
Janice's Journal
General News Feed
ACSOL News Alert: $10,000 Challenge Grant Offered in Support of Improving Tiered Registry Law!
An anonymous donor has offered to match up to $10,000 in donations in order to improve the Tiered Registry Law. Improvements would include, but not be limited to, lowering the tier assignments of those convicted of PC 311.11 (felony possession of child pornography), PC 288.8(c) (lewd or lascivious conduct with 14 or 15 year old), PC 288.2 (felony providing harmful material to a minor),...
YouTuber 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...
KS: 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...
CA Alert: California Governor’s Pardon will generally NOT terminate a duty to register
Dear registrants, family members, and supporters: Many private attorneys and public defenders indicate that a pardon by the California governor will terminate your duty to register. Some attorneys charge thousands of dollars to submit pardon applications. However, California Attorney General’s Office, which is responsible for maintaining California’s sex offender registry, will NOT terminate sex offense registration following a gubernatorial pardon grant, unless the...
California budget watchdog opposes prison for child-sex buyers — too expensive
Source: thecentersquare.com 8/8/24 The California Department of Finance filed formal opposition against a bill that would create stronger criminal penalties for individuals who solicit sex from children, saying imprisoning more buyers of sex from underage prostitutes would be too expensive. SB 1414, by State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, originally would have made attempted or successful solicitation of sex with a minor for money a...
Embracing 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...
Distinguished Speaker Added to ACSOL Conference
Distinguished speaker Heather Cucolo will join the ACSOL conference as a plenary speaker on Saturday, September 21, at 9:15 a.m. (Pacific). Her presentation will include her ongoing efforts on important issues such as criminal justice and mental disability law. Ms. Cucolo is a law professor at New York School of Law and is currently the acting facilitator of a joint program with the John...
‘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...
America Criminalizes Too Much and Punishes Too Much
Source: reason.com 8/6/24 When those on parole or probation are included, one out of every 47 adults is under “some form of correctional supervision.” Not only have we adopted more criminal laws at an astonishing clip, but the punishments our criminal laws carry have also grown markedly. Beginning in earnest in the second half of the 20th century, legislatures began to adopt laws that...
When 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...
Congressional 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...
CA: Prostitution Surveillance Video Recording Tower Goes Up in San Diego
Source: reason.com 8/5/24 Warrantless surveillance, Comic Con "sex trafficking," and the persistence of trafficking myths Moral panic about sex work leads to law enforcement practices that reach far beyond anyone engaged in or with erotic labor. The latest example comes from San Diego County, California, where cops are putting up a creepy surveillance tower under the auspice of stopping sex sellers and sex buyers...
When Is Sexual Behavior Out of Control?
Source: medscape.com 7/31/24 A 25-year-old man comes in with a pulled muscle. You ask if he has anything else to discuss. Sheepishly, he says he is concerned about his use of pornography. A 45-year-old woman struggling with depression finds herself persistently seeking sex outside the bounds of her long-term relationship. Her partner is threatening to leave. She is devastated and tells you she doesn't...
Lessons 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...
ACSOL Online Meeting August 17, 2024
You are invited to join ACSOL Executive Director and civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci and an ACSOL board member for our next meeting. The meeting will be held on Saturday August 17 online on Zoom beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 PM Eastern, and will last at least two hours. You can use the Zoom app or you can call in using a...
R. 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...
General Comments Aug 2024
Comments that are not specific to a certain post should go here, for the month of Aug 2024. Contributions should relate to the cause and goals of this organization and please, keep it courteous and civil. This section is not intended for posting links to news articles without additional relevant comment.
Efforts 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...
MI: 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...
CA: Registrant who ‘started 160,000 acre California wildfire by pushing his burning car into gully’ is pictured – as inferno triggers terrifying fire tornado
Source: dailymail.co.uk 7/25/24 A California sex offender has been arrested for allegedly starting a 160,000 acre wildfire - the state's largest this year. Ronnie ____ II, 42, was caught pushing his burning car into a gulley in upper Bidwell Park near the city of Chico on Wednesday, the Butte County District Attorney's Office announced. The vehicle then tumbled 60 feet down an embankment, sparking...