FL- EDITORIAL: Tough call, but right call

6-22-2009 Florida:

Megan's Law was not meant for people like Virgil McCranie.

This month, the 34-year-old Panama City Beach man asked the state's Clemency Board to pardon his sex-offender status so he "can give my children a life." The board, comprised of Gov. Crist, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, should comply with that request. The sticking point, though, may not be the law. It may be politics.

McCranie had sex with a 14-year-old girl when he was 19. She and her father pressed charges months after the relationship ended, and only after she learned that McCranie had impregnated another woman. According to McCranie, the 14-year-old asked him to forgive her. He claimed that he did, because he realized that she was the only woman he ever loved. Then he married her.

Though Virgil and Misty McCranie have been married for nearly 10 years and are raising four children together, that mistake continues to haunt them. Virgil McCranie pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious behavior with a child in 1994 as part of a plea deal to avoid a trial on the rape charges Misty instigated. He was placed on probation, and the judge withheld adjudication.

McCranie violated that probation when he fell behind on court payments. That violation put him under Florida's version of Megan's Law, even though his case predated the requirements of the legislation by four years. The law - named for a New Jersey girl killed by a sex offender - requires that sexual offenders in Florida convicted and released on or after Oct. 1, 1997 register with the state. Mr. McCranie said a lawyer who helped him with the probation violation recommended that he seek clemency and argue that he doesn't belong in the sex offender registry.

McCranie couldn't afford the $10,000 attorney's fee, so he pleaded his own case before the board. He says that he's lost several jobs because of his status, which also keeps him from attending his sons' games and his daughter's dance recitals. "She's my sunshine," he said of his daughter in an interview. "My children are starting to pay for something that really shouldn't be going on."

He's right, but being right won't necessarily get Mr. McCranie his pardon. Three members of the Clemency Board want to be on next year's ballot. Gov. Crist is running for the U.S. Senate; Ms. Sink and Mr. McCollum probably will face each other for governor. All three no doubt are imagining ads attacking them for being soft on sexual offenders.

"It's a difficult case," said Gov. Crist. "I'll make my ruling based on what I believe to be true." He and others don't have to condone McCranie's past. They just have to see that any system has flaws and give McCranie a shot at the present. ..Source.. Palm Beach Post Editorial