Sex Crimes

MA High Court Considers GPS Monitoring for Sex Offenders

Recently, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard a case where a sex offender who objected to wearing a GPS-monitoring device during his probation term. From the Boston Herald:

Allowing sex offenders to roam free without GPS monitoring has district attorneys joining forces to appeal to have judges granted the authority to slap the fiends with ankle bracelets.

The state Supreme Judicial Court yesterday heard both sides of the controversy in a case about a convicted Middlesex County child rapist who objected to wearing a GPS-monitoring device during his 10-year probation term.After he finished jail and civil sentences last summer, the Probation Department requested GPS monitoring for Goodwin.

Superior Court Judge Kathe M. Tuttman, however, ruled she did not have the authority to impose the monitoring. In her ruling, Tuttman cited a 2009 SJC decision that decided a 2006 law mandating GPS devices on all sex offenders placed on probation cannot apply retroactively.

Goodwin’s attorney, Beth L. Eisenberg, also said Tuttman’s ruling found imposing GPS tracking amounted to impermissable punishment because he was in compliance with all the terms of his probation.

Since the summer, about 234 sex offenders have been allowed to remove their ankle bracelets as a result of the SJC ruling.

H/T: Sentencing Law & Policy.

AZ Lawyer: Adam Walsh Act Unconstitutional

According to an attorney representing a retired police officer facing child pornography charges, the federal Adam Walsh Act is unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to his client. Specifically, the lawyer is challenging a provision of the new law that requires his client to wear an electronic monitoring basis. From the Arizona Daily Star:

Michael Piccarreta contends the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is unconstitutional as a whole and as it applies to his client, Jefferson Sutton Stahl, because it prevents individual judges from determining whether electronic monitoring is needed.

Stahl, 62, was indicted in January on three counts of possession of child pornography and one count of receipt of child pornography.

His is alleged to have purchased four DVDs containing child pornography in June, one year after retiring from the Tucson Police Department following a 32-year career.

Court records indicate Stahl began communicating online in June 2008 with an undercover U.S. Postal Inspector operating an Internet forum described as "a special group for daddys who love young little munchkins!"

Piccarreta told U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Ferraro deciding whether a defendant requires electronic monitoring should be up to the judge, not up to legislation.

"I feel it's inappropriate for Congress to limit judicial power," he said.

Electronic monitoring is an essential part of the pretrial release process for people accused of sex crimes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Carin Duryee said.

CA Bill Would Ban Sex Offenders From Social Networking Sites

A California legislator has recently introduced a bill that would ban sex offenders within the state from utilizing social networking sites (such as MySpace and Facebook). But some have already questioned the constitutionality of such a proposal. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Sex offenders in California would be barred from using social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace under a proposed law aimed at making the Internet safer for children as more and more of them flock to the Web.

Citing horrific cases in which children were sexually assaulted by men they met online, Assemblywoman Norma Torres, D-Pomona (Los Angeles County) introduced the bill last month, which would make it a crime for Californian's 63,000 registered sex offenders to use any social networking site. The proposed law defines those as a Web site "designed with the intent of allowing users to build networks or connect with other people and that provides means for users to connect over the Internet."

Assembly Bill 2208 is similar to legislation passed last year in Illinois, but doesn't go quite as far as a New York state law that additionally requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses and online aliases with state authorities, who can then turn over the names to the companies that run the social networking sites. After the New York law passed, 3,500 sex offenders were purged from MySpace and Facebook by the Internet companies.

The number of users on social networking sites has doubled since 2007, Torres said, and many of those users are children. She noted that just last month, a 33-year-old man lured a 12-year-old girl to a hotel in Anaheim, where she was sexually assaulted.

Ohio Shorthanded in Its Efforts to Monitor Sex Offenders

Ohio might be the only state in compliance with the Adam Walsh Act, but it is also entirely shorthanded in its mission to monitor local sex offenders. From Cleveland.com:

Cuyahoga County has the most sex offenders in Ohio, but only two full-time deputies regularly check on the 1,416 people considered the worst offenders.

Other large Ohio counties have fewer offenders than Cuyahoga's 3,300 but use more deputies to perform the state-mandated address verifications for Tier III offenders such as rapists. Franklin County uses five; Summit and Hamilton counties each use four.

Residents on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland never knew Anthony Sowell was a convicted sex offender until police unearthed 11 bodies from his property.

Neighbors questioned why they weren't notified by the Sheriff's Office about Sowell's violent past. He served 15 years in prison for attempted rape. Those residents never knew because Sowell moved into the house after getting out of prison in 2005 -- three years before a law took effect that would have notified neighbors about his past.

Sowell was required to register his address with deputies every three months. He did it most recently on Sept. 2. A deputy verified it Sept. 22 -- eight hours before prosecutors say Sowell attacked a woman in his home.

The two Cuyahoga County deputies who knock on doors nearly every day said the law requires them to spend considerable time checking low-level offenders instead of the most dangerous offenders.

NJ Parole Board Finds Sex Offender Polygraph Testing Effective

The New Jersey Star-Ledger is reporting that the state parole board has released an internal study claiming that the use of polygraphs on paroled sex offenders has been effective in detecting and preventing parole violations. According to the article, almost all of the state’s 5,600 supervised sex offenders must submit to at least one polygraph test every year. You may read the actual report here. From the article:

The parole board started using the examinations two years ago, and an internal study being released today says they’ve been effective in detecting and preventing parole violations even though budget restrictions have prevented the tests from being widely implemented.

Out of 236 paroled sex offenders who took polygraph tests, 86 had their supervision plans changed afterward. That includes 34 offenders who received more stringent supervision, such as out-of-state traveling restrictions or electronic monitoring.

Only 400 tests have been conducted so far, parole board spokesman Neal Buccino said. The state has five polygraph machines, and 11 officers have completed nine weeks of training in Philadelphia. The training and equipment was funded by a $50,000 federal grant and $16,667 in state money.

During polygraph tests, the sex offender sits alone in a room with the officer. Sensors on the chair and straps across the chest and stomach detect fidgeting, and fingertip sensors monitor sweat. A band around the subject’s upper arm tracks blood pressure.

Group Seeks To Ban MA Sex Offenders From Homeless Shelters

The Boston Globe has an interesting article discussing a new push to ban sex offenders from homeless shelters. From the article:

As the state’s steep budget cuts have forced organizations that help the homeless to cut beds, staff, and programs, the advocates for the needy say banning sex offenders would allow shelters to save money on security, open up space for others, and make shelters safer.

The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, which represents 90 organizations that provide services to the homeless, has urged state lawmakers to add shelters to an increasingly long list of residential bans for many sex offenders. They are already barred in some communities from living near schools, day-care centers, parks, playgrounds, libraries, or nursing homes.

While those who study sex offender recidivism rates say such residential restrictions are counterproductive, state lawmakers who support the proposed legislation argue that it also would fix a loophole in the law, which for five years has required the most dangerous sex offenders to post their names, addresses, and photos on a public website. They say too many sex offenders bypass the law by listing a homeless shelter as their address when they live elsewhere.

In a review yesterday of 162 Level 3 sex offenders - those with a high risk of committing sex crimes again - who list addresses in Boston on the state’s online registry, the Globe found that at least 74 percent reported they were living at homeless shelters.

It seems odd to fix a "loophole" that sex offenders are lying about their address by barring offenders from homeless shelters. It seems like the way to fix that problem is to verify offender addresses. Pushing homeless offenders out into the streets does nothing to prevent future sexual violence.

Halloween Sex Offender Roundup

Here is a (spooky?) collection of Halloween sex offender news stories from around the web:

From Sentencing Law & Policy, we learn that certain Alabama sex offenders are required to attend an educational meeting on Halloween night which will feature "updates on sex offender laws, the Adam Walsh Act and rehabilitation opportunities, as well as training for employment."

Law enforcement officials in Omaha, Nebraska report that they will be paying extra attention to sex offenders on Halloween night. Officials are encouraging parents to check the online registries to know who lives where.

Meanwhile in Missouri, registered sex offenders are required to stay at home from 5 to 10:30 pm on Halloween, absent "just cause" to leave. The ban remains in effect despite a 2009 study that found "no significant increases in sex crimes on or around Halloween after an examination of crime data looking at non-familial sex crimes from 1997 to 2005 against children 12 years old and younger."

Floridian sex offenders also cannot participate in trick or treating at their homes and must display a "No Candy Here" sign on their front doors.

In California, sex offenders who are not on parole or probation are allowed to put up Halloween decorations in their yard, despite objections from neighbors.

Halloween Sex Offender Crackdown '10

The approach of Halloween brings with it lots of interesting sex offender issues, which we have frequently blogged about. Recently, the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole has notified sex offenders on supervised release that they cannot participate in Halloween activities involving children. You may view the complete list of restrictions here. Officials in Albany, New York have done the same. From the article:

The Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole is notifying sex offenders that it supervises that they cannot take part in most Halloween and similar fall festival activities involving children, including trick-or-treating with their own children and allowing anyone in their households to pass out candy where they live.

The restrictions do not apply to sex offenders who are no longer under the supervision of the agency, which generally extends through their time on probation or parole. Thus they do not apply to those on the state's sex offender registry who are no longer under Board of Probation and Parole supervision, nor those who have met the criteria and been removed from the registry, the agency's communications director, Melissa McDonald, said today.

The restrictions are not new and have been enforced in recent years, although they have not been broadly publicized as the board is doing this year. "Our goal is to protect the safety of the public, especially children, throughout the Halloween season," the board's executive director, Bo Irvin, said in a press release issued today. "By reminding offenders of the restrictions upon them, and the consequences of non-compliance, we make the harvest season safer for Tennessee families."

Every state-supervised sex offender in Tennessee has received, through their probation or parole officer, a document detailing the restrictions and the consequences of non-compliance for their signature. Officers are also making announced and unannounced visits to verify that offenders are abiding by restrictions and the terms of their curfews.

The Halloween panic is always predictable, but I'm still waiting for any evidence that children are at greater risk on Halloween than any other day of the year. While kids are out and about, they are often among other children and/or supervised by adults. Further, the kids whereabouts are pretty well known to the parents (at least within a certain radius). If a child is victimized or disappears on Halloween, I'm sure the police will go right to the area sex offenders. That seems like a pretty good deterrent for crimes on that particular day.

MN Gov Says No To 50 Inch Plasmas at Sex Offender Center

Officials at Minnesota's Moose Lake Sex Offenders Program have lost 24 new 50-inch plasma TVs after Gov. Pawlenty called their purchase "boneheaded." From the Star Tribune:

State officials said the televisions, which were mounted in common areas, made it easier to supervise patients at the 400-bed facility.

But when Pawlenty learned of the purchase in a Star Tribune story on Tuesday, he ordered the televisions removed immediately and sold if possible.

Later, Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said that Pawlenty wanted to go even further. "The governor believes those involved should be reprimanded, at a minimum," McClung said. A spokesperson for the state sex offender program said a review is underway.

Pawlenty's pledge to find out who had authorized the purchase, Winkler said, was an attempt to divert attention from high-ranking officials, and showed that "the buck stops nowhere."

Globalizing Sex Offender Registration

Time has an interesting article detailing growing support for an international sex offender registry. A bill, H.R. 1623, was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) earlier this year to do just that. The bill, which you can read about here, would alert foreign officials whenever a U.S. sex offender intends to travel and encourages other countries to return the favor. From the article:

While the world's attention was focused on Phillip Garrido, who is accused of abducting 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991 and holding her hostage for 18 years as a sex slave, three other alleged sexual predators were quietly brought back to the U.S. to face prosecution for abusing countless children in Cambodia. The horrifying ordeal of Garrido's victim is now well documented; however, the stories of an estimated 1.8 million other children worldwide who are forced into the multibillion-dollar commercial sex trade every year remain largely unheard.

The case has reinvigorated support for H.R. 1623, the "International Megan's law," which Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, introduced in March 2009. If passed, the bill would alert officials abroad when U.S. sex offenders intend to travel and would encourage other countries to keep sex-offender lists and notify American officials about offenders' U.S. travel plans. U.S. law can grab American predators overseas.

Human-rights organizations say an International Megan's Law would be a step in the right direction. "If we know someone is committing serious crimes at home or overseas, we want to accurately identify them," says Karen Stauss of the Polaris Project, an organization dedicated to combating human-trafficking. Amanda Bissex, UNICEF Thailand's chief of child protection, agrees that H.R. 1623 would benefit vulnerable children. "We need to improve law enforcement and the economic welfare of children," says Bissex, "but we also need to address people's attitudes and create an environment where there is zero tolerance for abuse of children, whether in their home country or overseas."

One of the wrinkles that I think is important in evaluating such a law is what countries will do with the information. In the case of state registries, the laws prohibit the information for being used to harass, attack, or discriminate. Since the U.S. has no power over countries receiving the information, unless bilateral or multilateral agreements are reached, other nations might bar all offenders from travel or subject them to extra punishment/regulation. At the very least, hopefully lawmakers recognize the errors of past laws by defining "sex offender" narrowly.