ME- Revisiting The Sex Offender Registry Law

4-21-2009 Maine:

In the four years that have passed since the Maine Legislature made sweeping changes to the Sex Offender Registration Notification Act, the state has found itself in the eye of a controversy that pits public protection against individual constitutional rights. Now members of a legislative panel are working on several bills they hope will correct problems in the law that have formed the basis of constituitonal challenges to the Maine Supreme Court. The answer may lie in a tiered approach that attempts to classify various offenders.

A Portland lawmaker wants to prohibit communities from passing ordinances that impose residency restrictions for registered sex offenders. When the Maine Municipal Association found out about the bill, it wasted no time in giving lobbyist Kate Dufour her marching orders.

"As you know, LD 385 essentially restricts home rule authority," Dufour says. Dufour is working on behalf of the MMA to minimize the potential impact of LD 385, a bill sponsored by state Rep. Anne Haskell, who also happens to be a co-chair of the Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

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In addition to obstructing a community's right to impose its own legal protections, says Dufour, the bill doesn't seem to provide local officials with any assuarnces from the state on sex offender issues. "Our concern is not only do you restrict the home rule authority, you do it in a fashion where you shift responsibility to the state. And municipal officials are not convinced that there is a solution there. There isn't a safety net. There isn't an ability to address this concern, a legitimate concern at the local level."

So should municipalities be able to prevent a registered sex offender from living near a school or, for that matter, anywhere else in their communities? Is Maine's sex offender registry informative or punitive? Should sex offenders who were convicted up to 10 years before Maine passed its first registry into law be subject to a policy that didn't even exist at the time of their crimes?

"One of the biggest issues is this issue of whether or not the registry is simply a civil registry, or whether it really is a punishment. And there are conflicting court determinations about that," says Rep. Anne Haskell. Haskell hopes the Legislature will pass needed changes to the state Sex Offender Registry Notification Act, a policy that dominated headlines nationally two years ago when a man drove from New Brunswick to Maine and killed two registered sex offenders that he selected at random from the Department of Public Safety's internet-based registry.

Communities became increasingly skittish on the issue and began trying to pass ordinances that attempted to bar sex offenders from living within short distances of schools or daycare centers. Calvin Shelton, a former offender, says those policies couldn't be more wrong-headed. "Prejudice is the only reason one has to ignore the truth and facts. That along with myth, fear and ignorance has been the driving force behind all these laws, taking advantage of the public's hysteria over registered former sex offenders, which by all information available today are the least likely to ever harm a child in the future."

During public hearings on several sex offender bills, members of Haskell's panel hope to craft some revised policy that satisfies the concerns of the public and the offenders. A possible tiered approach to the registry which would attempt reclassify the public's access to offenders based on the seriousness of their crimes is being considered. But assistant Maine Attorney General Laura Eustak Smith testified that a single strategy cannot be adopted for offenders who claim they were convicted of consensual sex as teenagers.

Smith says that's because offenders have differing opinions on what constitutes consensual sex. "If one party is under 14, by law it's not consensual. That's a gross sexual assault, if we're talking about intercourse between two people. Once the youngest party is 16, again assuming no force, threat or special relationship -- we're not talking about teachers and students, doctors and patients, anything like that -- it's not a crime."

Lawmakers on the panel are expected to take the bills up in work session next month. ..News Source.. by A.J Higgins