NJ- Galloway plans appeal of sex-offender ruling

8-1-2008 New Jersey:

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP - An attorney filed for permission Thursday to appeal before the state Supreme Court a decision upholding the invalidity of local ordinances limiting where sex offenders can live.

If the court agrees to hear the case, lawyers for Galloway Township will start the appeal process in a few weeks, according to Demetrios K. Stratis, an Attorney for the American Center on Law and Justice.

The center started handling appeals on Galloway's behalf for free after Superior Court Judge Valerie Armstrong overturned the township law restricting sex offender residency. The 2007 ruling favored a 20-year-old student whose Tier 1 sex-offender status would have barred him from living at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in the Pomona section of the township.

The student, who has remained anonymous, is on schedule to graduate in fall 2009, according to his attorney, Frank Corrado. He was convicted at age 15 in an incident involving a 13-year-old girl, according to the original complaint.

The Galloway law prohibits convicted sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school, park, playground or day-care center. That leaves open about 36 percent of inhabitable land, which is defined as areas containing or zoned for housing.

The Appellate Division agreed earlier this month with Armstrong that the Galloway law and a similar one in Cherry Hill are invalid.

The three-judge panel's decision hinged on their finding that local law is pre-empted by the state's Megan's Law.

Stratis has said he plans to argue against that point. Local laws limiting sex offender residency would not interfere with state law in this case because New Jersey Megan's Law does not spell out where sex offenders can and cannot live, he said.

Galloway was the second town in the state and the first in Atlantic County to adopt such an ordinance. More than 100 cities have since enacted sex-offender residency restrictions. Until all legal avenues have been exhausted, those laws will not be enforced in most places where they remain on the books. A few towns repealed their laws after Armstrong's decisions.

In 2006, Armstrong also overturned a Lower Township ordinance that was challenged by Steven Elwell, a Tier 1 sex offender convicted in connection with a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student at Lower Cape May Regional High School, where he taught and coached wrestling. Elwell wanted to move from Middle Township to Lower, but could not find a place to live. ..News Source.. by EMILY PREVITI Staff Writer