GA- OUR EDITORIAL BOARD’S OPINION: Real offender in this sex case is Georgia law

11-20-2008 Georgia:

In its relentless efforts to expel Wendy Whitaker from her Columbia County home, the state of Georgia has crossed the line from protector to persecutor of its citizens. The state isn’t inciting torch-wielding mobs to chase Whitaker from her home 20 miles west of Augusta. But it is using a gaggle of state attorneys and a politically driven, poorly written sex offender law to wreck her life.

Twelve years ago, Whitaker engaged in oral sex with a classmate in her sophomore class on high school property. She had just turned 17; the boy was three weeks shy of 16. After they were caught, Whitaker pleaded guilty to sodomy, never realizing that the admission to a single act of adolescent stupidity would cast a shadow on her life that she could never escape. Whitaker is now doomed to be on Georgia’s sex offender registry for the rest of her life. She can’t live near schools, churches, swimming pools, school bus stops, day care centers, parks, rec centers or skating rinks, or work near schools, churches or day care centers.

Whitaker poses no danger to the children of Georgia; she’s a happily married 29-year-old, trying to get on with her life and live in the home that she and her husband bought a few years ago. Yet, the state has spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to force Whitaker from her house.

In 2006, after politicians discovered that there was political mileage in talking tough on sex crimes, Georgia passed one of the most draconian laws in the country on where offenders could live or work. Born out of political expedience rather than careful research, the law failed to differentiate offenders based on the nature or severity of the crimes, placing Whitaker and others like her in the same category as truly dangerous people such as rapists and child molesters. The law imposed the same wholesale residency and work limits on all offenders, including Whitaker. A sheriff’s deputy told Whitaker in July that she had to move within 72 hours because her house was within 1,000 feet of a day care center. She didn’t want to give up her home and sought help in federal court.

On Nov. 13, U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper declined to intervene on Whitaker’s behalf. The judge accepted the state’s contention that finding a new place to live represented an “inconvenience” for Whitaker rather than a banishment from her home county.

Describing what is happening to Whitaker as an “inconvenience” is a grave understatement. After plotting all the property in Columbia County, a researcher testified that registered sex offenders could legally reside on only about 1.2 percent of all the parcels in the county, assuming there were even rental housing available on those parcels.

Whitaker fought back tears when the court ruled against her. She testified that her home will go into foreclosure now because she and her husband cannot afford to pay rent somewhere else and the mortgage.

“A teenager shouldn’t be punished in perpetuity, especially one who poses no threat to society,” said Whitaker’s attorney Sarah Geraghty.

Most of the bills that the Legislature enacts are pantomime —- symbolic acts designed to give the appearance of decisiveness. But, sometimes, lawmakers blunder into acts of real and grievous consequence, including the sex offender statute. Since its passage two years ago, the over-reaching law has lost several court challenges that required the Legislature to revise it. For example, a united Supreme Court struck down the law last year as it applied to homeowners who owned their homes before a day care or church opened nearby, ruling that such forced evictions violate the takings clause and property rights protections in the Fifth Amendment.

Now, lawmakers have to revamp the law in January because the high court recently declared unconstitutional the provision of the sex-offender registry law that made homelessness a crime. With all of the successful and costly legal challenges to the law, common sense might suggest that the General Assembly reconsider its haste in passing it and rewrite the law to reflect the difference between the youthful indiscretions of teenagers, such as Whitaker, and the predatory acts of dangerous deviants.

The law should create a graduated scale of restrictions, leveling the toughest limitations on the most dangerous offenders rather than on people like Whitaker. That would free up law enforcement officials to focus their time and attention on those truly dangerous offenders.

The public has no problem understanding the difference between Whitaker’s offense and those of true child predators. Why can’t our legislators? ..News Source.. by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution