Tag: Pennsylvania

About 150 people in Philadelphia are in state prison and 150 more are on probation or parole for neglecting to fill out address-change notifications or missing a required reporting date — all failures to comply with a sex-offender-registration law the state Supreme Court found unconstitutional last July. Now, the fates of those people — along with as many as 17,000 others statewide who were required, under that law, to remain on a registry for decades or life — hinge in large part on the state legislature. On Monday, the Senate…

HARRISBURG — The state House on Tuesday voted unanimously on changes to the state’s sexual offender registry intended to correct problems the state Supreme Court identified as unconstitutional. If left uncorrected, more than three-quarters of the more than 20,000 people now registering on the Megan’s Law list might need to be removed, according to data provided by the Pennsylvania State Police. Full Article

A bill introduced this week in Harrisburg attempts to fix flaws in the state’s sex-offender registration system identified in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in July and could affect more than 10,000 registrants. Full Article

ABC27 Investigator Kendra Nichols found two local fire departments with registered sex offenders, Londonderry Fire Company near Middletown and Citizens Fire Company of Highspire. At the time of the investigation, both registered sex offenders had the fire department addresses listed on the Megan’s Law website as places of employment. ABC27 told the Londonderry Fire Company the results of the search and it took action. Full Article

A panel of appellate judges ruled last week that Pennsylvania’s established process to designate a convicted sex offender as a “sexually violent predator” is unconstitutional. Full Article

The state Superior Court has handed down a ruling that put an immediate halt to all court proceedings related to defendants facing sexually violent predator designations. As the second ruling within several months to call the state’s current sexual offender statute into question, District Attorney John T. Adams said that it’s time to start fresh.”What we need now is a rewrite of our statutory scheme dealing with the sexual offenders registry,” he said. Full Article Note: this article appears to be for subscribers only. It may be readable after doing…

Since 1995, Pennsylvania has had Megan’s Law, which seeks to protect communities by requiring sex offenders to register with the state police, or face arrest if they fail to do so. But a July decision by the state Supreme Court has undermined that once bedrock certainty, and cases like Davies’s are now testing the law’s reach, under which offenders have their photos, addresses and other identifying information published on a state-run website. http://www.mcall.com/news/police/mc-nws-pennsylvania-megans-law-sex-offender-registry-unconsitutional-20171024-story.html

[Bucks County Courier Times – Pennsylvania] After ____ ____ stole an SUV that was left idling in the parking lot of a Bristol Township convenience store, he quickly learned an 11-year-old passenger was in the backseat. Once the boy made his presence known, ____ pulled over and let him out before driving away, according to court records in the 2009 crime. The boy wasn’t hurt. ____ was arrested and later pleaded guilty in Bucks County Court to charges including theft, receiving stolen property and interference with custody of children. The…

The number of sex offenders on the state’s Megan’s Law sex offender registry could drop as the result of a July ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, three Valley district attorneys and the Pennsylvania State Police say. Full Article