MO- Proposal would add thousands to sex offender registry

Even a change in the state constitution doesn't eliminate an ex post facto challenge. Changes in law, if resulting in additional punishment, do not change the rights that existed when a crime was committed.

3-26-2009 Missouri:

SPRINGFIELD -- "I believe it's important to know who your neighbors are," said Lisa Simmons, Greene County's sex offender registrar.
Simmons spends her days recording information about the latest people convicted of sex crimes.

"We include name, address, date of birth, descriptors, charges which will include age of victim, the victim's gender, offense city, and conviction city," she said.

On a typical day, Simmons adds nearly two dozen people to the Web site in Greene County alone.

"We see people everyday in this office that look like a common, ordinary person that you would never guess just running into them," said Simmons.

He could be your neighbor, and you just don't know it. But that could change if a Missouri state senator gets his way.

"It would afford Missouri citizens the opportunity of amending the state constitution so that those who've been convicted of a registerable sex crime prior to January 1, 1995, would have to be registered," said Sen. Jason Crowell, who authored the resolution.

It would upend a 2006 Missouri Supreme Court opinion that ruled retroactive registration illegal under Missouri's Constitution. The decision forced law enforcement officers to remove more than 4,300 names from the list. A "yes" vote though from fellow lawmakers, then voters would put them back on the list.

"It would add approximately 180 offenders in Greene County, " said Simmons.

That's more names for Simmons to enter, but she says she's all for it if it can make her family and her neighbors safer.

If both houses of the Legislature approve the resolution, the governor would place it on either the August 2010 or November 2010 statewide ballot. ..News Source.. by Sara Forhetz, KY3 News