1-7-2008 Maine:
AUGUSTA, Maine — With a growing number of legal challenges to Maine’s sex offender registry, members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee are discussing rewriting the law this session creating a new registry system.
"The sex offender registry is so important and it is so important to so many people," said Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, co-chair of the committee. "I think we have to do all we can, work day and night if that’s necessary to make that work, and make it work fairly and efficiently."
The panel was updated on the legal status of the registry last week when Assistant Attorney General Laura Smith told committee members there are currently four cases challenging the registry in Superior Court.
"We do know that the attorney in one is seeking additional plaintiffs," she said.
But she declined to guess when any of the cases may be decided in Superior Court, let alone by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on the expected appeal by whichever side loses at the lower court level.
"But it seems pretty clear to me it won’t happen before this session is over," said Rep. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, co-chairman of the panel. "I think we have to move on this and not wait for some idea or direction from the courts."
The committee held public hearings last year on several proposals to change the registry after the state supreme court ruling that sent back to the Superior Court a case where a "John Doe" sued alleging the state law is unconstitutional because of the retroactive portion of the law requiring sex offenders since 1982 to register.
That retrial has yet to get under way. In addition to the retroactive portion of the law being challenged, there is a case in which a person convicted of a sex crime in New Hampshire who is now living in Maine is challenging Maine’s requirement that he register in this state.
"We had hoped we would get some direction from the courts, but it looks like that is not going to happen," Diamond said. "I think we need to move forward and do what we can to improve the law."
Several convicted sex offenders and their family members want changes in the registry, and some want it abolished. Shirley Turner, the mother of convicted sex offender William Elliott, asked lawmakers last year to keep addresses off the registry to protect offenders from "vigilantes."
Elliott was shot and killed Easter Sunday 2006 at his home in Corinth. State police investigators determined that Stephen Marshall of Nova Scotia accessed the state sex offender registry Web site before he came to Maine and killed Elliott and Joseph Gray of Milo before taking his own life.
Others have urged lawmakers to change the current sex offender registry to remove some offenders entirely from the list, such as teens that have consensual sex but one is over 18.
But complicating the committee’s work to create a new Web site law is the federal Adam Walsh Act that establishes guidelines for sex offender registries. Failure to meet the federal requirements by summer 2009 would lead to the state losing 10 percent of some federal law enforcement grant funds.
"That does put us between the rock and the hard place," said Sen. Roger Sherman, D-Houlton. "I think there need to be some changes. We need to sit down as a committee and talk this through."
Sherman, who graduated from law school but does not practice law, is worried that whatever the committee crafts for changes may not pass muster with the court.
"I really don’t want to try and read the minds of the court," he said.
But he agreed with Diamond that to wait what could be years for the court process to work would hurt a lot of individuals.
While the panel is far from taking any votes, they appear to be headed for a registry that has two parts — one public and the other only for police. What panel members call "serious offenders" would continue on the public registry. But many now on the public registry would be moved to the law enforcement-only database, such as a teenager convicted of a sexual offense against another teenager where it was consensual.
Several members also have expressed support for changing the "look back" period at least for the public registry.
"I think this is a case where the Legislature sees that what we did was wrong and we need to fix it," Gerzofsky said. "I think we will fix it." ..more.. by
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