Massachusetts lawmakers are trying to give prosecutors the power to demand that juries (not judges) decide whether offenders nearing the end of their prison terms should be placed in a state treatment facility. The proposal was filed a week after a convicted Level 3 sex offender was arrested on charges he raped a young boy in a library.
The ABA Journal has an article about a child pornography case in which the images are allegedly password protected on the defendant's laptop computer that presents some interesting constitutional issues.
Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell's proposed to place a special imprint of the driver's license of registered sex offenders. She proposed the idea during her annual State of the State address and said that it is an idea "worth a discussion."
Law enforcement officials in a South Carolina town are designing their plan to enforce a new ordinance that bans sex offenders from moving into town. State Attorney General Henry McMaster says the rule would likely stand up in court if challenged.
The ability for prosecutors to have juries decide whether or not to remand offenders for civil commitment seems to me to have the very likely potential to bias the proceedings against the offender in a very substantial way. All prosecutors would have to do is have the victim make an impact statement on the stand or otherwise delve into the lurid details of the original offense and the jury would be ready to do far worse to the offender than just commit him or her indefinitely.
The turn of events, though, is not surprising. A level 3 offender commits a horrible crime and, in it's wake, comes a legislative overreaction (or at least, what seems to me to be an overreaction). I wonder if it's going to be one of those "name" laws.
The article even states though that the results between judges and juries have been roughtly equivalent. If that is the case, then why the need for the new law at all?
Posted by: Guy | February 09, 2008 at 12:10 AM
It seems to me that permitting a jury to determine commitment smudges the line between treatment and punishment even more than it already is.
Posted by: Ilah | February 09, 2008 at 02:04 PM