South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has signed a new bill into law that prohibits sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a church, school, daycare center, or playground. The law however, reduces the penalty for sex offenders who fail to register. From WBTW News:
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford signed a new sex offender bill into law in June that makes it illegal for a convicted sex offender from living within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare, church, or playground.
The law also reduces the penalty for sex offenders who fail to register with county sheriff’s offices, which state law requires offenders to do on a yearly basis for the rest of their lives.
Under Jessie’s Law, which Sanford signed in Myrtle Beach in 2006, the penalty for a convicted sex offender failing to register was a mandatory 90 days in jail, with no part of that sentence suspended.
The law signed in June, that penalty moves the charge from circuit court into magistrate’s court and will allow a magistrate to sentence an offender anywhere from one day to 30 days in jail, or fine him $500.
The new law won’t go into effect until 90 days after the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division implements mapping software into the state’s online sex offender registry that would allow uses to type in a street address to see the offenders living around that address.
SLED said it did not have the funding to add the mapping software and didn’t have any timeline when the software would be added.
Two state representatives from Horry County, Alan Clemmons and Thad Viers, sponsored the latest law and helped push it through the General Assembly and onto the governor’s desk.
Clemmons said the June law, also known as the Brady Bill, was a step toward strengthening offender laws and making South Carolina’s offender laws some of the toughest in the nation. “We work tirelessly to make sure that the public is protected, particularly with regard to the most vulnerable of our state,” Clemmons told News13.
Prosecutors and authorities working to track, register and prosecute sex offenders said the penalty passed with the Brady Bill was a sign that the legislature was softening the state’s sex offender laws.
“Anybody that were to take the Joan Brady Bill and call that a lessening of standards in South Carolina for sexual offenders is totally off point,” Clemmons said.
Clemmons said he wasn’t aware of the penalty included with the bill and that it was likely added when House and Senate members met to finalize the bill before presenting to the governor.
Clemmons said he still wasn’t aware of the penalty change when News13 asked him about it on Nov. 7.
“I wasn’t part of the conference committee. I really don’t know if it came from the Senate side, from the House side, if it was in conference where that particular language came from. But, the bottom line is, if we have backed up, and it appears we have backed up, we need to take a cold, hard look at it as we go forward in the next session,” Clemmons said.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster told News13 he supported the 1,000 foot rule in the Brady Bill, but “the message it sends is that we’re not as serious about it as we were when it had to go to circuit court and it had a penalty of 90 days,” McMaster said.
McMaster said lessening the penalty would hurt the progress law enforcement agencies have made in enforcing the state’s offender laws and would give offenders no incentive to follow them.
Great to see that SC has joined the list of criminal governments. I expect they already were but this confirms it.
Who is it that believes that it is appropriate in the United States to tell someone where he/she may not live for the rest of his/her life? And to do so retroactively???? All with ZERO proof that it actually accomplishes anything!! Who are these people who believe that? It is unbelievable and insane proof that the United States has never really left the toilet. After all, it was not so long ago that people here thought it was appropriate to have separate drinking fountains for various races of people. Not such a good bunch of people and I guess that will never change.
So give them what they deserve. Every single person who is listed on any Sex Offender Registry anywhere in the United States should be retaliating on a regular basis. Hurt the people who want these laws. Ensure that the laws are completely dysfunctional and exist only at the absolute highest possible cost of time, money, and effort.
Just think about it briefly and you will discover that there are many, many very effective ways to be a bad citizen in the United States. I'll start you off - stop worrying about helping and giving anything to anyone or any entity. Years ago I used to give several thousand dollars a year to charities and work for them. I gave blood as often as I could and I was an organ donor. I don't do any of that any longer - just because and only because of the criminal governments' harassment campaign against me and my family. That's just the start, work at it and you'll be shocked at what you can accomplish.
Posted by: disillusion1998 | November 13, 2008 at 01:31 PM