Source: nytimes.com 6/4/24 Judges in Louisiana could order people who are convicted of sex crimes against children to undergo surgical castration under a bill that state lawmakers passed overwhelmingly on Monday. While Louisiana and a few other states, including California, Texas and Florida, have long allowed chemical castration, the option to punish sex offenders via surgical castration — which is far more intrusive — appears to be the first in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and prisoners’ advocacy groups. The bill now awaits the signature of…
Read MoreTag: Louisiana
Louisiana Residents Emergency 4/28 Call to Action (CTA): fight bills HB 166 (forced vasectomy) and SB 371 (forced surgical castration)
Source of the email ACSOL received: UV4SOR.org (contact@uv4sor.org) Fellow Advocates, We have an Emergency Call to Action (CTA) and need your voice to oppose HB 166 (forced vasectomy) and SB 371 (forced surgical castration) currently before the Louisiana Legislature. We are doing both bills together as one CTA in the interest of time and the similarities (and heinous nature) of these 2 bills. The Senate and House Reconvene Monday at 1:00 PM CDT, so we need your response to be sitting in their inboxes or on their voicemails by 4/29…
Read MoreLA: Proposal to make vasectomy mandatory for convicted sex offenders advances to the House
Source: wdsu.com 4/5/24 BATON ROUGE, La. —The mandatory vasectomy bill passed committee at the state capitol Thursday. HB 166 would require convicted sex offenders to undergo a mandatory vasectomy procedure. The author of the bill, Rep. Delisha Boyd, says this is a measure to help protect women. Rep. Boyd also wrote a bill to reduce penalties for possession or use of marijuana drug paraphernalia, proposing the offender should not be fined more than $100. Read the full article
Read MoreMO: Louisiana Bill SB371 to allow judges to sentence child sex offender with surgical castration advances
Source: louisianaradionetwork.com 3/26/24 A bill SB371 to give judges the discretion to punish individuals who sexually assault a child with surgical castration advances from Senate Judiciary C. Baton Rouge Senator Regina Barrow’s bill allows for the sentencing of surgical castration if the victim is under the age of 13. “This would allow a judge to impose a sentencing that may require them to be surgically castrated. And this would actually happen before they are released from prison,” said Barrow. Lake Charles Senator Mark Abraham said he has a problem with…
Read MoreLA: Louisiana woman challenges Sorna using ADA angle
Source: courthousenews.com 12/21/23 NEW ORLEANS — A federal court in Louisiana denied the state police’s request to stay a convicted sex offender’s lawsuit alleging that Louisiana’s onerous sex offender notification requirements have resulted in an unfair cycle of arrest, imprisonment and release for noncompliance in violation of her due process rights. The state authorities did not offer any argument on the four factors required to obtain a stay pending appeal, including where the public interest lies in the litigation. Read the full article and download the decision
Read MoreLA: Some good Halloween news from Louisiana
Source: NARSOL 10/31/23 NARSOL is pleased to report that our efforts to end the practice of “No-candy” Halloween warning signs have borne fruit in Louisiana. This outcome is a direct result of the precedential case in Georgia NARSOL sponsored, McClendon v. Long. A week before Halloween, 2023, NARSOL made the determination that three specific parishes in Louisiana were requiring everyone on the sex offender registry within their jurisdictions to post “No candy at this residence” signs on their house; in their yard; or, in one of the three, on the…
Read MoreLA: Lawmakers, investigators working on ways to prevent sex crimes against children
Source: wafb.com 2/14/23 BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Louisiana leaders are reporting a sharp increase in the amount of sex crimes committed against children. At a special committee meeting Tuesday, Feb. 14, one investigator described the fight as “a war the state is losing.” “There are so many cases it’s a tidal wave of tragedy,” said Davis Ferris, an investigator from the Attorney General’s office. Ferris says the state’s six cybercrime agents are working close to 6000 cases on top of new ones coming in every day. State leaders believe…
Read MoreLA: Disgraced sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 100 years in high-profile sex crimes case
Source: wbrz.com 1/3/23 LIVINGSTON PARISH – A former Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to 100 years in prison for a multitude of sex crimes — several involving children — on Tuesday, years after WBRZ broke the story of his being arrested in a case that reportedly has numerous juvenile victims. Dennis Perkins, first arrested in 2019 along with his wife Cynthia, pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of second-degree rape, two counts of sexual battery of a child, one count of video voyeurism, two counts of production of child…
Read MoreLA: Louisiana Senate committee passes bill to roll back early release for multiple felony convictions except sex offenses
Source: thecentersquare.com 5/18/22 (The Center Square) — Legislation to roll back some criminal justice reforms implemented in 2017 in regards to repeat nonviolent felony offenders cleared a Senate Committee on Judiciary on Tuesday. House Bill 544, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Villio, R-Kenner, would roll back calculations for early release adopted through the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Package of 2017 for non-violent offenders convicted of four or more felony offenses. Current law allows for a convicted felon who has served at least 25% of the sentence imposed to become eligible for parole…
Read MoreLA: Hire of convicted rapist causes business to close, Shreveport discusses violence
Source: shreveporttimes.com 5/16/22 The Shreveport City Council voted unanimously to uphold a license revocation against a local taxi cab service that admitted to hiring a convicted rapist. The company, VIP Taxi Services LLC, spoke before the City Council on Monday in an attempt to appeal the Shreveport Police Department’s order that it suspend services immediately. SPD revoked the company’s license after discovering VIP allowed registered sex offender Ontario Samuels to drive, despite his third-degree rape conviction. Read the full article
Read MoreLA: Vermilion Parish Sex Offenders Are Getting Scammed
Source: katc.com 1/6/22 Louisiana deputies says [sic] sex offenders are the latest target in a recent phone scam going on in the area. In recent days, Vermilion’s Sheriffs office says scammers have been posing as deputies. They are doing so in order to get cash from registered sex offenders. Detectives say the perpetrates search the online database for offenders, then call and threaten them with jail time. After they convince the victims, they would make them pay with gift cards and through bitcoin to avoid going to prison. Eddie Langlinais…
Read MoreLA: Lafayette case over Louisiana sex offender identification law could be heard by Supreme Court
Source: theadvocate.com 9/27/21 Louisiana attorneys may know this week whether the U.S. Supreme Court will review a case this term involving a state statute that compels people convicted of sex crimes to carry cards identifying them as sex offenders. High court justices were culling through possible cases to review in the fall starting Monday morning, including one in which former 15th Judicial District Judge Patrick Michot Sr. ruled in 2019 in favor of Tazin A. Hill, formerly of Duson, a convicted sex offender who altered his state-issued identification card to…
Read MoreLA: Person convicted of sex offense must register despite post-probation dismissal
Source: americanpress.com 6/30/21 NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana Supreme Court ruling means a man will have to continue to register as a person convicted of a sex offense even though his video voyeurism conviction was set aside after he served probation. The high court, in an order dated Tuesday, refused to reconsider a May ruling in the case of Mark A. Davidson. Court records show he pleaded guilty in 2005 in Monroe and was ordered to serve three years of probation. After the probation was completed the court agreed…
Read MoreLA: Special IDs for people with a sex offense conviction: Safety Measures or Scarlet Letters?
Source: nytimes.com 6/15/21 Judge Patrick L. Michot, of the 15th Judicial District Court in Lafayette, La., said the notation was “not the least restrictive way to further the state’s legitimate interest of notifying law enforcement.” “It could be accomplished in the same way that some other states utilize,” he said. “Louisiana could use more discreet labels in the form of codes that are known to law enforcement.” Of the nine states that call for some sort of disclosure of sex-offense status on state ID cards, Louisiana and four others require…
Read MoreLA: Legislators look at options to increase reliability of LA. sex offender registry
[houmatoday.com – 12/18/20] Legislators began Thursday looking at changes to state law that would address inaccuracies in the registry that alerts neighbors that someone convicted of sex and/or child predatory crimes lives nearby. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor found that the severity of the crime, called a tier, wasn’t accurate for 61% of the sex offenders tested. The information listed on the registry wasn’t updated in 21% of the cases. That could mean the public often doesn’t know when a predator is within their midst. It could also mean that the…
Read MoreLA: Acadia Sheriff’s deputies arrest registrants for not disclosing status on social media
[katc.com – 8/6/20] Acadia Parish Sheriff’s deputies have identified seven sex offenders who have been in violation of sex offender social media laws, Sheriff KP Gibson says. Between March of 2020 and July of 2020, the sheriff’s sex offender registry unit conducted an investigation of all registered sex offenders in the parish, to ensure they were following the law regarding use of social media. They found seven registered sex offenders were using social media illegally, but not posting on their profile that they were convicted sex offenders, conviction information, address,…
Read MoreLA: Man removed ‘sex offender’ from his ID, and a judge dismissed the case. Why?
When a Lafayette Parish man removed the words “sex offender” from his state-issued ID, law enforcement officers said Louisiana law had been broken. A local judge saw things differently. Full Article
Read MoreLA: Teen beat up a stranger he recognized as a sex offender, now faces hate crime count, NOPD says
A 17-year-old boy who realized he was at the same convenience store as a man whose picture had appeared on a mailed sex-offender notice followed the man away from the shop and beat him up, New Orleans police said this week. Now, besides facing a count of misdemeanor battery, Tyrin Calloway stands accused of a hate crime, apparently on the theory that he targeted his alleged victim, a stranger, for being a registered sex offender, according to Criminal District Court records. Full Article
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