Sex Crimes

Alaska and Florida Consider Laws against Bestiality

Due to their legal status as property, animals are subject to physical and sometimes sexual abuse. While human-animal sex is almost universally condemned, it is not explicitly illegal in 15 states. Florida and Alaska, reacting to incidents of human-animal sex, are now looking to criminalize bestiality. From the Associated Press:

It's a subject that can cause nervous snickering, a little uneasiness and even a few bad jokes.

But many in the southeast Alaska community of Klawock, population 800, weren't laughing last April after a 26-year-old registered sex offender was accused of molesting a local family's pet dog.

The man was spotted by a local woman coaxing the Labrador retriever into the woods near a ball field. There he allegedly tied it to a tree, taped its muzzle shut with duct tape and had sex with it, witnesses told police at the time.

The man had been twice convicted of raping a young boy and more recently had served probation for assault after lunging at a child. While the incident with the dog was reported to the police, Klawock Mayor Don Marvin said nothing happened for two days while fearful parents escorted their children home from school.

Because Alaska has no law against such an attack, Ketchikan District Attorney James Scott eventually charged the man with two counts of criminal mischief, which was later changed to a theft charge.

In requesting a $10,000 bail, Scott told the court that the state was concerned that if a small child had been available and unattended that day, "the small child would have been found taped (and) tied in the woods."

Shocked by that and other similar cases of involving humans having sex with animals, lawmakers in Florida and Alaska are considering bans on bestiality. They are among 15 states where the practice is not explicitly illegal.

Alaska's House Judiciary Committee on Friday heard testimony on a measure that would expand the state's animal cruelty law to include sexual conduct. It would make the practice a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine.

In Florida, a bill that would make sex with animals punishable by up to five years in prison has been unanimously approved by two Senate committees and has two other committee stops before reaching the full chamber.

I have to admit I was surprised to learn the number of states that had not already criminalized bestiality. I fully support these proposed laws. However, I'm baffled by the assertion of the district attorney that had a small child have been available, the perpetrator would have raped the child instead. Is there any evidence that those that commit acts of bestiality are more likely to molest children? And if so, is there really any reason to think the populations are substitutable? Clearly, both acts are wrong, but I think bestiality should be made illegal solely on the basis of the harm caused to animals. Adding unproven fears of child molestation to the equation is unnecessary alarmism.

Sex Offender Wins Lottery, Suffers Severe Beating

Earlier we reported that an Alaskan sex offender won a $500,000 lottery sponsored by a rape support group. Police are now saying that the sex offender was attacked on a downtown Anchorage street with a tire iron or metal pipe.  From The Guardian:

Police say Alec Ahsoak, 53, was attacked when a man approached him to ask if he was the man who won the $500,000 (£343,000) jackpot.

Whether the attack was motivated by Ahsoak's winning the lottery or the widely distributed reports that he is a three-time convicted sex offender was unclear.

"There was no apparent attempt at robbery," police lieutenant Dave Parker said. "He was struck eight to 10 times, and then he threw his Pepsi at the assailant and he ran for Phyllis' Cafe and the assailant ran off."

By yesterday evening, Ahsoak had been discharged from the hospital and police had taken a man and a woman into custody, Parker said. The man was being questioned by police and had not yet been charged with a crime, he said.

Ahsoak told officers he had been stopped by a white man believed to be about 21 and wearing a blue-and-white checked shirt, blue jeans and a white baseball cap as he entered the a local mall. The stranger asked if he was the lottery winner, Ahsoak said he was, and then went into the mall.

When he walked out minutes later carrying a Pepsi, the man approached him and began hitting him on the head with the weapon, police said.

Ahsoak was transported to a local hospital to be treated for his injuries, which did not appear to be life-threatening, police said.

Ahsoak was convicted in 1993 of molesting two girls under the age of 13. He was sentenced to four years in prison, according to court records.

In March 2000, police arrested him again for molesting a different young girl he was baby-sitting. Through a plea bargain, Ahsoak was sentenced to six years in prison on a single count of sexual abuse of a minor.

Prosecutors in that case dropped another sex abuse charge and a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

Update: Thanks to SexOffenderIssues in the comments for further information on the case. For tracking of sex offender vigilantism in general, you should also go here.

Sex Offender Wins Lottery Held by Rape Support Group

A registered sex offender has won a $500,000 lottery sponsored by a non-profit group that helps rape victims.  The man was thrice convicted of sexually abusing minors. From USA Today:

When a non-profit that helps rape victims decided to hold a lottery in Alaska, there's no way that they could have known that the $500,000 jackpot would go to a registered sex offender.

But that's just what happened when they pulled the winning ticket Friday night in the Standing Together Against Rape raffle.

"He said he was going to buy a house and said he was going to donate part of it to God, and you know charity," Abe Spicola, the owner of Lucky Times Pull Tabs, a co-sponsor of the statewide lottery, tells the Anchorage Daily News.

Alaska Supreme Court Calls US Supreme Court "Idiots"

Well, not really. But I think that is a fair reading of the opinion that the Alaska court just issued.

A few days ago, the Alaska Supreme Court found that a prosecution under its sex offender registration statute was a violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The statute reviewed was essentially the same one the United States Supreme Court reviewed in Smith v. Doe. The method under which the Alaska court reached this conclusion was shocking. The court noted that it had previously held that Alaska had interpreted its Ex Post Facto Clause to be the same as the federal clause in all prior cases. Thus, it couldn't use the usual dodge to a Supreme Court opinion by arguing that the decision was based upon a broader right embodied in the state constitution. Instead the court revisited all of the Mendoza-Martinez factors and basically concluded that the US Supreme Court did the analysis wrong. The court noted that:

In following federal authority, our ex post facto cases have implicitly reasoned that it was unnecessary in those cases either to deviate from the federal analytical approach or to construe our constitution more protectively. We implicitly so reasoned because the federal decisions reached an outcome not inconsistent with the Alaska Constitution. Nonetheless, we have never endorsed federal ex post facto analysis as superseding or limiting our independent consideration of Alaska’s ex post facto prohibition. Nor have we indicated that federal interpretation of the federal ex post facto prohibition prevents us from reaching a different, and more protective, result under the Alaska Constitution.

Stare decisis therefore has no application here. Today’s decision does not overrule or depend on overruling any prior decision of this court, nor does it depart from any past holding of this court. We have never adopted a reading of Alaska’s ex post facto prohibition that would, unless overruled, foreclose today’s result....

Summing up the effects under the seven factors, we conclude that ASORA’s effects are punitive, and convincingly outweigh the statute’s non-punitive purposes and effects....

We therefore conclude that the statute violates Alaska’s ex post facto clause.

It would have been one thing if the court was willing to decide that the Alaska constitution was broader. However, deciding it was the same, but using the same method as the USSC and reaching the opposite conclusion is just an attack on the USSC. I think the dissent has the better end of the argument on the majority's methodology:

I disagree with the court’s conclusion that ASORA violates the ex post facto clause of the Alaska Constitution. The court maintains that its “reliance on the multifactor effects test is consistent with our past use of federal law in resolving state ex post facto claims.” But our past decisions have firmly established a practice of interpreting the Alaska ex post facto clause “no differently” than its federal counterpart. The court now purportedly applies that federal test to the facts of this case: “[t]he intent effects test provides an appropriate analytical framework here.” But the court’s decision directly conflicts with the United States Supreme Court’s application of the same test to the same statute. As we have concluded in the past, this case presents “no reason for us to interpret Alaska’s constitutional provision differently.”

I think the Alaska Supreme Court chose the wrong way to rule that there was an Ex Post Facto Clause violation. The Alaska court could have simply held that the USSC decision in Smith did not review the criminal penalties associated with the registry while the case before the Alaska court only concerned the criminal prosecution. The Smith court made this distinction easier (and, I think, right) when it wrote:

A sex offender who fails to comply with the reporting requirement may be subjected to a criminal prosecution for that failure, but any prosecution is a proceeding separate from the individual's original offense. Whether other constitutional objections can be raised to a mandatory reporting requirement, and how those questions might be resolved, are concerns beyond the scope of this opinion.

So, while I think the Alaska court is right in the outcome, it's reasoning seems a little suspect.