Local Restriction Survives

Clearly an uphill battle to humanize notions behind residency restrictions, as this loss in Miami-Dade court shows. Story at the link.

The ACLU promises to appeal.

I hope the people paying the legal fees to defend the ordinance are happy.

Maryland Legal Update

Whats new in Maryland concerning laws pertaining to sex offenders?

Bills that passed in the 2009 session of the General Assembly are retroactivity, minors, photographs and one more I will have to review, all housekeeping sorts of things. An onerous bill to ban from public parks where children regularly gather reported unfavorably. In all there were 36 bills of which 4 became law. Curiously, re minors, retroactive registration is required, a topic addressed in the recent 9th Cir. panel decision discussed in this post.

Maryland currently does not have residency restrictions. These, and additional bans from public property (Md currently bans so from schools and day care property) would make it even more difficult for the ex felon to reenter society, create sex offender ghettos, and headache and expense to enforce. We see this from experience in Georgia, Iowa, Florida and other states that do this restriction.

Residency restrictions typically restrict within various distances from schools, day cares, bus stops and parks. In places this effectively bans so from large portions of the city, in some instances the entire metro area. Rural locale become the only place so may live. In Miami, a bridge causeway has become home to many. Homelessness is the only option for many.

Registration
Registration is not effective and should be reviewed. At a minimum the three tier risk category regime needs work. Too many on the registry do not belong there, do not require monitoring, and pose no danger to the community. The risk regime fails to account for this.

Registration is costly and tax payers do not see any benefits.

Registration has collateral consequences for ex offender's families, many of whom face stigma simply by being related to a registered person. This is unjustifiable given that most registered persons are either wrongly convicted, pose no danger, or are convicted of minor off-the-wall offenses as solicitation, aiding and abetting, public urination, possession of child porn, romeo and juliet and statutory sex that present no danger of recidivism, crimes that non puritan societies do not consider crimes. Most do not recidivate according to DOJ and all credible studies (95 percent).

Registration does not separate predators from the non dangerous variety.

Registration cannot forecast future crimes, or the geographical location of crime as thought to be related to the public disclosure of so residence addresses, and not even if the perp is a registered person as the recent Garrido case shows. The case spotlights the failure of registration to perform the intended function, which is prevention and public safety.

California is considering a registry for arsonists.

Registries create an underclass and movement toward tyranny, toward government sanctioned badges of poverty and slavery, an underclass of have-nots. Registries are a tool of oppression useful only to fear mongers and business seeking to maintain a cheap labor pool. As history tells it from ancient times to Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, this is the beginning of the end of free society. The right wing, neo-con, southern churches and oil lobby have concocted this as part of a scheme to roll back the freedoms of the New Deal and liberal allies have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. These are the same lobbies that seek to cut medicare and medicaid, children's health insurance, fight bitterly against a public health insurance option, seek to abolish the department of education and roll back a minimum wage law. Look at your neighbor, your elected representative, your mayor, your congressm or senator, and see if that is him or her.

It would be nice to know who is going to commit the next crime or sex crime but this is impossible to predict. Those convicted of sex crime are not so different from the general population of ex offender as to warrant the special attention they have received. Registries are a threat to freedom everywhere. Everyone deserves a second chance to make a first impression.

Sex Offender Hysteria

I noticed recently that I received nice comments and might have picked up a few more readers, not that I'm counting. But it's encouraging to see that other people find this of interest.

More and more we're seeing media articles cutting into sex offender hysteria and wondering where it will lead, such as these collected from Sex Crimes (WBAY Channel 2 Wisconsin) blog, Residency Restrictions don't work (Syracuse dot com); Rights Must be Observed, (Tufts Daily student paper); No Homes (Wall Street Journal); and Massachusetts Struggling (Herald: federal AWA requirements difficult to implement); this is change in the sense that more attention is being given to the ineffectiveness of residency restrictions, banishment, and throw away the key mentality. This is change in the sense that more in the media seem to be showing an interest in this issue, and seem less willing to just go along with stupid legislative proposals designed to serve one purpose, that of seeming to be tough on crime in order to further the politicians political career. Who could be that cynical?

I see that Rep. Sensenbrenner wants to impeach Judge Kent to keep him from receiving his 169 thou and change retirement pay now that he's pleaded to obstruction after being charged with sex crimes.

Curious Registry Stuff: Real Offender is the Law

Here is the intro to this good piece (ht, Doc), called "Real Offender,"

In its relentless efforts to expel Wendy Whitaker from her Columbia County home, the state of Georgia has crossed the line from protector to persecutor of its citizens. The state isn’t inciting torch-wielding mobs to chase Whitaker from her home 20 miles west of Augusta. But it is using a gaggle of state attorneys and a politically driven, poorly written sex offender law to wreck her life.

The Supreme Court (Danforth opinion), Ohio and Missouri make news this week in the Habeas and Residency Restriction arenas. Get your update from here of course, thanks to Doc Berman.

On Danforth, the headliner here says it all (THANKS SCOTUSBLOG). Was that supposed to be a good thing I wonder, Wanda? To expand the "criminal rights" -- I'm sure it is a magnanimous thing for the Court to allow the States to do that. But read on, and we find we are actually talking about something akin to the retrospective application, or as some say, the "retroactive benefit" of Supreme Court rulings. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, in which Justice Kennedy joined.

Is it only coincidence that retrospective application of laws is also in the spotlight in those Residency challenges? Don't let the big words fool you. What this involves is determining whether the rules of the game can/will be changed in the middle of the fourth quarter, sort of like counting the Florida and Michigan delegates after the DNC said they wouldn't before the vote (or non-vote), because the state's delegations broke, (transgressed?) the Party rules.

That depends, of course, on what the word Justice means to you. The Framers'? I heard something about "restoring habeas" (Obama) in last night's debate with Hilary. Was he speaking only about Guantanomo detainees? Barrack also mentioned the phrase "wrongful convictions." This is clearly something to be redressed through a pardon or a more muscular Habeas process. There must be consequences for those who would callously engage in behavior designed to produce wrongful conviction of innocent individuals.

Here is an interesting, if tangential discussion arising out of Danforth on Scotusblog's site.

“…while on your website you claim this is relevant to constitutional habeas.”

If by “constitutional habeas” you mean habeas as required by the Suspension Clause, the only point in today’s decision relevant to that question is the Court’s acknowledgment that common law habeas (and therefore the Suspension Clause) was limited to jurisdictional questions. That was once a furious historical debate, but it’s largely over, and the Fay v. Noia revisionism lies in ruins.

The primary debate over § 2254(d)– the one in the two law review articles I cited in the beginning and the one before the Ninth Circuit in Irons v. Carey — is all about the statutory writ and whether Congress can, consistently with Article III, require “deference” (actually a limited form of res judicata) to state court judgments in a class of cases where Congress could repeal the jurisdiction entirely if it chose. Today’s holding on the nature of the Teague rule is highly relevant to that debate, as I explained in comment 7, above.

And here's this one concerning Theory: "Blinking on the Bench -- How Judges Decide Cases"