Sex Crimes

David Meggett, Say it Ain't So

Dave Meggett was one of those NFL players that I just liked for some reason when I was younger. Unfortunately, he is being charged with rape (after already being charged with another sexual assault). From ESPN.com:

Several months after he was charged with raping a South Carolina woman, former NFL running back David Meggett was in jail Wednesday on allegations of another sexual assault.

Meggett, 42, was arrested and charged with raping a 21-year-old woman in her North Charleston home, authorities said.

The woman told police she woke up at 1 a.m. Tuesday and found a man she knew as "Mike" sitting on her bed, according to an incident report. The man demanded that she repay $200 she owed him and raped her when she said she didn't have the money, police said.

Afterward, the man told her he was sorry and that she didn't have to repay him. The woman drove herself to the hospital, where Meggett later met her and was arrested, according to police records.

Meggett, who is listed as living in North Charleston, had been out on bond in connection with another sexual assault charge.

New South Carolina Law Restricts Residency, Reduces Penalty For Failure to Register

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.

Halloween Sex Offender Restrictions Roundup

As Halloween approaches, law enforcement officials are advising parents to check state sex offender registries before letting their children go Trick-or-Treating.  Sex offenders in Missouri are challenging the further restrictions related to Halloween activities. Maryland sex offenders have received letters from the state's Probation and Parole Division telling them to stay inside on Halloween from 6 P.M. until the next morning, as well as putting 'No Candy' signs on their doors. Officials in Idaho, Kentucky, New York, and Texas have begun taking similar precautions.  The Washington Post has more.  From the Associated Press:

[Texan authorities] have arrested 24 sex-offense suspects during a two-day sweep, part of a national crackdown on sex offenders before Halloween.

The majority of arrests this week were of sex offenders who violated their registration requirements. The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force planned the roundup specifically for Halloween, officials said.

"There's a lot of kids that are going to be on the streets pretty soon," said Tom Smith, the supervisory deputy U.S. marshal, who headed the sweep.

Such sweeps are part of a nationwide law enforcement trend targeting sex-offense suspects or registered sex offenders on or before Halloween and more severely restricting their activities that night.

In Missouri, four sex offenders are suing over a new state law that requires them to avoid all Halloween-related contact with children, remain inside their homes and post a sign saying they have no candy to keep trick-or-treaters away. The ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed suit on the offenders' behalf in federal court Wednesday, arguing the provisions are too vague to enforce.

Maryland has an almost identical law and last week sent 1,200 violent and child sex-offenders a paper sign in the mail that read "No candy at this residence," which they must post on their front doors or possibly face a parole violation.

South Carolina has a 5 p.m. Halloween curfew for sex offenders on probation or parole. They cannot give out candy or have their outdoor lights on.

In New York, the Division of Parole requires registered sex offenders to stay home or in designated locations and makes spot checks to enforce the rule. Sex offenders also can't answer the door to trick-or-treaters, have Halloween candy in their possession or dress in costume.

Texas requires registered sex offenders to turn off their porch lights and prohibits them to have any exterior decorations between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m., with parole, probation and police officers checking to see if they comply.

Those opposed to the crackdowns say they unnecessarily scapegoat sex offenders who already are complying with the conditions of their parole.

Also, check out these two great posts by Grits for Breakfast about Halloween-time crackdowns.

Vermont Weighing Costs, Benefits of AWA Implementation

The State of Vermont stands to lose up to $35,000 in federal funds if it does not enact Adam Walsh Act-complaint legislation.  However, that may be the far cheaper option. From The Times Argus:

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, passed by Congress in 2006, seeks to unify Internet registry standards across all 50 states. Vermont would have to overcome a number of logistical hurdles in order to comply, lawmakers say.

But the new act has also spawned a philosophical debate about which offenders belong on the publicly accessible Internet sex offender registry.

"I think it's a good idea to have a uniform system, and I support the idea in principle," said Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But we believe this thing is a little more complex than what first met the eye, and we're going to have to take a hard look at whether we should comply, given that it may cost millions to do so."

Vermont has about 2,400 sex offenders on its statewide registry, but only about 400 meet the threshold required to land on the more public Internet registry. Under the Adam Walsh Act, all 2,400 offenders would likely appear online, because federal guidelines use an "offense-based" classification system to assess risk into a three-tier hierarchy.

Anyone convicted of those crimes – even non-contact mis-demeanors – would appear on the registry for anywhere from 15 years to life, depending on the offense.

Vermont, conversely, uses a "risk-based" system that relies on a number of different criteria. And lawmakers and policy makers have thus far reserved the Internet registry for only the more serious offenders.

"I think the committee is in agreement that we ought to expand the Internet registry, but I think it's going to be up to the Legislature, the administration, and perhaps ultimately the courts to decide whether we can comply with this federal act," Sears said.

The Vermont Department of State's Attorneys and the office of the Defender General have said an expanded registry could lead to millions of dollars in additional legal costs for the state, mainly because offenders would prove less amenable to plea deals if the conviction meant a slot on the Internet sex offender registry.

The office of the Defender General estimated it would need an additional $1.8 million if the new registry standards were enacted. The Department of State's Attorneys pegged first-year costs at more than a half-million dollars.

An official from the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the registry, said the state is capable of meeting the new federal requirements, but that would necessitate two additional employees and new computer software, estimated to cost a total of $350,000 in the first year.

The federal guidelines also require more detailed information on the offenders, including their street addresses, the addresses of their employers, their license-plate numbers and descriptions of their vehicles.

Juvenile offenders as young as 14 also would qualify for the Internet registry for extreme offenses.

"The question ought to be what makes sense for Vermont and how far do we go?" Sears said. "Should people who had a statutory rape conviction be on there for life? Or someone who committed a non-contact offense? These are some of the issues we need to think about."

H/T: Sentencing Law & Policy.

South Carolina School District Plans Sex Offender Checks on Volunteers

A school district in South Carolina plans to begin checking the names of parents who volunteer through the state's sex offender register.  We recently discussed a similar story out of Colorado. From The Greenville News:

The Greenville County school district plans to start running the names of parents through the state sex offender registry to weed out potential predators who might volunteer in schools, district officials said Tuesday.

Parents who don't want their name checked can opt out by telling their child's principal they don't want to be considered for any volunteer work, said Burke Royster, deputy superintendent for operations.

The program will be piloted at Skyland and Taylors elementary, Beck and Sevier middle and Hillcrest and Travelers Rest high schools, and expanded to all district schools in January if there are no glitches, Burke said.

"Most of the surrounding districts are already doing background checks, and some are checking all volunteers against the SLED database," Royster told the school board.

The State Law Enforcement Division keeps records of people convicted of all types of crimes in South Carolina and charges $8 per check, Royster said. The district already runs SLED checks on volunteer coaches and is talking to legislators about gaining free access to SLED's database for use on all school volunteers, he said.

The district will use information already in its database about parents and guardians to check their names against the sex offender database, which is available free to the public online.

Around the Web

A $105 million lawsuit against NBC brought by a woman who claimed a televised sex sting by "Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator" drove her brother to kill himself has been settled. You can find a prior post about the incident here. The lawsuit had claimed that the woman's brother, a suburban Dallas prosecutor, fatally shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The New York Times has more.

CNN is running an article entitled "Lawmakers vow to execute child rapists."  South Carolina's Attorney General argues that states could fight Wednesday's ruling by "waiting for a change in the makeup of the Supreme Court or by getting legislatures to redo death penalty laws." The idea of simply redoing death penalty laws doesn't make any sense. Doug Berman rightfully says the justices' ruling makes such an effort difficult, but he does float an idea which might have some limited effect in the event the Court decides to revisit the issue.

CNN is also reporting that the FBI has "arrested more than 300 members of prostitution operations and removed 21 juveniles from sex-selling rings."  The sweeps were conducted over the past five days in sixteen cities nationwide.  FBI Director Robert Mueller said that this week's sweeps bring to 433 the number of child victims recovered in the five years since the FBI began its Innocence Lost initiative, which was designed to combat underage prostitution.

Daughter of the polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs has "told her attorney ad litem in an e-mail to step aside."  For more, see the Salt Lake Tribune article.  The sixteen year old girl told the Salt Lake Tribune that her Texas attorney is restricting her visits with people she would like to see and has barred her from corresponding with her father, who was sentenced to prison last year for a term 10 years to life in Utah for rape.  Her attorney has said in court papers that police believe she was spiritually married to an older man when she was fifteen year old.

Around the Web

CrimProf Blog directs us to an article on Law.com discussing "[a] steadily increasing number of courts across the United States are prohibiting witnesses and victims from uttering certain words in front of a jury, banning everything from the words 'rape' to 'victim' to 'crime scene.'"  According to the article, prosecutors and victims' rights advocates claim that "courts are going too far in trying to cleanse witness testimony, all to protect a defendant's right to a fair trial."  The ABA Journal has similar coverage.

ZDNet reports that Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle is "backing off of a bill he signed requiring lifetime GPS monitoring of child sex offenders." According to the article, Gov. Doyle  intends to use passive monitors that cost much less than the real-time devices and delay implementation of the law he promoted on the campaign trail to save money.  Even under the new plan, the program would cost over $11 million.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has more.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has "signed a bill that makes it illegal for sex offenders to live within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers and playgrounds."  Sex offenders who violate the new law could be charged with a misdemeanor on the first offense and face up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.

The town of Weymouth, Massachusetts is "joining a growing number of communities across the Commonwealth by banning Level 3 sex offenders - those deemed most likely to re-offend - from living within 1,500 feet of any school, park, daycare center, or recreational facility."  The move makes it nearly impossible for Level 3 sex offenders to actually live in town.  According to the article, "[w]ithout a state law restricting where sex offenders can or cannot live, municipalities are increasingly ... drawing up maps that hem sex offenders into tiny pockets of town or forbid them from visiting public places like libraries."

U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer (District of Montana) says his office will "withhold federal prosecution against offenders within the Missoula District," in light of a ruling (which we previously mentioned here and here) that found constitutional problems with the Adam Walsh Act.  The U.S. Attorney however did state that sex offenders whom fail to register in Montana will still be prosecuted, but not within Missoula District; his office will forward on prosecutions within the other districts.  Of note, the U.S. Attorney did note that he expects the Justice Department to appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit or defend the law as Constitutional in another court.

Sentencing Law and Policy reports that the New Hampshire Supreme Court has "upheld the state's practice of charging convicted sex offenders $34 a year to pay for the state's sex offender registry."  The appellant, who was convicted in 2000 of five counts of felonious sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl, challenged the twice-a-year $17 fee convicted sex offenders must pay each time they register their address and other particulars with their local police department. According to the article, "[t]he money covers the cost of registering sex offenders: $15 of it goes toward the costs of maintaining the statewide sex offender registry. The remaining $2 goes to the local police department for work registering offenders."  The Boston Globe has more.

An Ohio man, who police say was caught on tape having sex with a picnic table, will now spend six months behind bars.  The man has pleaded no contest to several misdemeanor charges.  County police report that a neighbor secretly taped the man "walking out onto his back deck in broad daylight, at times completely naked, standing at a round, metal table on its side and having sex with it."

Around the Web

The Associate Press is reporting that a Kansas judge has ordered a convicted sex offender to post "signs around his house and a decal on his car proclaiming that he is a sex offender."  The signs in front of his house read "A Sex Offender Lives Here," while his vehicle has a large decal with bold yellow lettering reading "Sex Offender In This Car."  The man lives in a central Kansas town of only about 150 people.  The man is appealing the requirement.

The LA Times has an article about the Texas sex offender who is no longer running for mayor of Wilmer, Texas.  The man was arrested four years ago after showing up to have sex with what he thought was a 15-year-old girl.  He says that wide media coverage generated by his candidacy sparked death threats and increasingly hostile pressure on his friends and loved ones, forcing him to reconsider.

The South Carolina House of Representatives has approved a bill that would prohibit sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers, parks and public playgrounds.

St. Louis has passed a law recently that prohibits convicted sex offenders from opening a business that caters to children.  The law was sparked by complaints from residents about a convicted child molester moving his ceramic studio into their area.

Sentencing Law and Policy has a story about a 29-year old, married mother of three who was convicted of a misdemeanor sex offense seven years ago.  The article details her difficulties in complying with Iowa's  sex-offender residency law which bans sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care.  The woman argues that she can't find a home that complies. 

The Associated Press reports that the global patent director of Pfizer Inc. has been arrested and charged with child pornography.  The man stands accused of posing as a 28-year-old woman and, while chatting online, trading hundreds of images of children engaged in sex acts.  The man is a British citizen who is a permanent U.S. resident working in Pfizer’s legal division in Connecticut.

Around the Web

LexisNexis has announced the release of Sex Offender Alerts, "a solution that provides law enforcement officials with automated notification of the location of sex offenders, especially as they move from one law enforcement jurisdiction to another."  These alerts are designed to support enforcement of the federal Adam Walsh Act.

CNN reports that Japan is being criticized by UNICEF because its "child pornography law suffers from serious loopholes that hobble law enforcement and threaten children around the world."  Although the current law bans production and distribution of child pornography, it is not a crime to possess it.

How Appealing links to a new essay on Slate which asks "Why Is Prostitution Illegal?" The essay discusses various approaches by countries all over the world.  The author of this article also appeared on NPR to discuss the legality of prostitution.

A South Carolina sex offender has been arrested after he allegedly sent obscene text messages and pictures to the cell phone of a woman who did not know him.  The man is now charged with communicating obscene messages to another person, participation in the preparation of obscene material and unlawful use of telephone.  He is also facing unrelated charges in another county.

Around the Web

An Alabama sex offender has been jailed after getting caught taking a 14-year-old girl to a dance at her middle school.  The man had been previously convicted for first-degree sodomy on an 8-year-old.

A helpful reader sent this article about a new University of New Hampshire study which found that "the threat of online predators trolling the Internet and social Web sites seeking to stalk, kidnap and rape young children has been greatly overstated."  According to the study, most Internet sex offenders are not adults targeting young children by posing as fellow youths, but rather young adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships that lead to non-forcible statutory rape.

Sentencing Law and Policy has a post discussing an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which examines how technology is used in sex offender tracking.

A South Carolina middle school teacher has been sentenced to six years in prison for having sexual encounters with five teenage boys.  The woman was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In the wake of Ohio's new Adam Walsh Act-complaint law, a federal judge has suspended "community notification for sex offenders who were reclassified into tier three and convicted prior to Jan. 1."  The court order also allows for sex offenders to petition their reclassification.  The order is subject to change as the lawsuit is still pending in federal court.