OH- Registry lists need to label offenders accurately

3-13-2009 Ohio:

Convicted criminals don’t deserve sympathy often, especially those who held people, including children, hostage.

But Danny Seals and others like him really don’t deserve the stigma attached to them long after they served their time in prison.

Seals won a rare victory this past week in his quest to be removed from Ohio’s sex-offender registry when prosecutors dropped a charge against him for failing to register and notify the local sheriff of his current address.

There’s no doubt Seals failed to do those things, just as it’s clear he does not belong on a sex-offender registry.

He’s never been accused or convicted of a sex crime, and there’s no mention of
the word “sex” in Seals case file from the conviction that landed him in prison for
five years in 1994. But with children involved as his victims, Seals learned in 1999 that he had been classified as a child-victim offender under Megan’s Law, the predecessor of the Adam Walsh Act.

In Ohio, no separate registry exists for child-victim offenders, meaning they
are included in the state sex-offender database and tasked with sex-offender registration requirements — and their notoriety, too.

The glaring unfairness of this approach is apparent to just about everyone, although Ohio lawmakers and law enforcement have done little to correct it for years. We’re hoping a federal judge hearing a lawsuit on the matter will rectify the situation as soon as possible.

Once again, we don’t mean to minimize Seals’ crimes or appear unsupportive of sex offender registration. We firmly believe the public has a right to know a sex offender is living next door.

But the execution of offender registry lists must be perfect and accurate. That’s not the case in Ohio.

For now, Seals has agreed to comply with the registration requirements until 2014, some 20 years after his five-year sentence began.

That’s probably as wise as prosecutors’ decision to dismiss his case before trial and create yet another miscarriage of justice. ..News Source..