In a case first reported in Dec. 2008, today comes a report of sentencing this man for apparently taking pictures of children in a halloween display. As mentioned in Dec. I still cannot find any Wisconsin law prohibiting such conduct. So, I am still open to anyone who knows of such a law. Please e-mail me...
eAdvocate Post 4-7-2009 Wisconsin:
JUNEAU — A registered sex offender won’t be handing out candy on Halloween anytime soon.
During a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Steven Bauer ordered that Edward Lieber, as part of his sentence, never put up a Halloween display or pass out candy or gifts to children.
Lieber, 35, was found guilty on three felony counts of intentionally photographing a minor without consent as a registered sex offender.
The Waupun Police Department was contacted by three Waupun parents in regard to Lieber taking pictures of their young children, ages 2, 3 and 4, while they were trick-or-treating at his Madison Street home last Halloween.
A woman told police that the children entered a “Halloween-type structure” where Lieber was sitting inside with a camera.
Witnesses said that as the children entered the structure, Lieber followed them and proceeded to take pictures of the children without asking permission, according to the criminal complaint.
Lieber is listed on the Wisconsin Sex Offender Registry after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Fairwater girl in 1993, according to the criminal complaint.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Lieber told police that he took approximately five to six photographs that were intended for his father, according to the complaint.
Bauer also ordered Lieber to serve 60 days in the Dodge County Jail followed by two years of probation. ..News Source.. by The Reporter Staff
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
WI- Sentence: Defendant can't hand out Halloween candy
Police violated paedophile's human rights by telling employer about 20-year-old sex conviction, High Court rules
eAdvocate Post: 4-7-2009 United Kingdom:
Police violated a paedophile's human rights when they told his employers about a 20-year-old conviction for sexually molesting a three-year-old boy, a judge ruled today.
Mr Justice Nicol said the disclosure of the 1987 conviction - which led to the man being sacked from his job - was 'unnecessary'.
Northumbria Police failed to take into account Home Office guidelines before unlawfully disclosing the 'historic' and 'spent' conviction to his bosses, the High Court ruling added.
It amounted to a breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, which enshrines every citizen's right to respect for privacy and family life, said Mr Justice Nicol.
But the paedophile, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had his claims for compensation dashed after the judge said that police had been entitled to disclose to the man's employers his 2007 arrest on suspicion of abusing his daughter.
(eAdvocate Post)
The man - referred to in the High Court as 'W' - was aged 16 when he was handed a 12-month supervision order by a youth court for sexually assaulting a three-year-old boy he had been babysitting.
But the judge ruled the disclosure of that fact had not cost him his job.
Following the disclosures to the man's employers in late 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped proceedings against W, but not before he was sacked from his blue collar job.
Lawyers for Northumbria Police argued that both disclosures were a 'proportionate and necessary' step to protect the public.
They said they were made amid fears that W could enter people's homes and have contact with children in the course of his job.
Nicholas Wilcox, for the police, said a family court judge had later found that W 'was a dangerous paedophile and that he had sexually abused no less than three children of different ages and sexes and presented a significant ongoing risk to children'.
Although that decision post-dated the disclosures to W's employers, the barrister argued it showed police had been right to view him as posing a 'high risk of sexual offending'.
Mr Justice Nicol ruled: 'W has an unanswerable complaint that the decision to disclose his 1987 conviction was unlawful.'
Although W's employers said at the time that they would not have taken him onto the pay roll had they known about his murky past, the judge said the 1987 conviction was 'spent' under the terms of the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and that had not been taken into account.
The 2007 arrest, however, showed the police had a 'current interest' in W and had been lawfully disclosed so that W's employers could 'take care' over his contact with children.
Julian Knowles, for W, told the judge the police disclosures had caused him 'humiliation, anxiety and loss of reputation'.
He added that, as well as loss of earnings and self-esteem, the stigma of the 1987 sex conviction had led to 'intimidation' and left him suffering sleeplessness and panic attacks.
Mr Justice Nicol said the court's declaration that W's human rights had been violated was a 'sufficient remedy' and a damages award was not necessary to give him 'just satisfaction'. ..News Source.. by Daily Mail Reporter
MO- State Supreme Court considers sex offender case
Post by eAdvocate 4-7-2009 Mssouri:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The state Supreme Court is considering another challenge to Missouri’s sex offender registry.
The court heard arguments today from 11 offenders. Some were convicted of sex crimes in other states before 1995, when Missouri’s registry law took effect. Others were convicted of misdemeanors in Missouri before 2000, when those crimes were added to the registry.
In 2006, the Supreme Court said the registry cannot be retrospectively applied to Missouri residents who committed their crime before 1995.
State attorneys argue that out-of-state offenders must register because they willingly submitted to Missouri’s laws when they moved. They also cite a federal requirement to register.
But the 11 offenders say the state’s ban on retrospective laws still applies and that the federal requirement does not overrule state law. ..News Source.. by Bill Dalton
KS- ‘It’s a reporting issue’
4-7-2009 Kansas:
Risk factors for abuse not easy to pinpoint
The area of southern Lawrence between Holcom Park and Louisiana Street, south of Clinton Parkway/23rd Street, is a mixture of apartment complexes, single-family homes, churches and businesses.
What sticks out here is that nothing sticks out. This section of the city is characteristically Lawrence in many ways.
But it is also home to nearly a quarter of all the reported sexual assaults against children reported to Lawrence police between 2004 and 2008.
Why?
What is it about this area that makes it, statistically, the place where sexual assaults against children are most often reported?
There doesn’t appear to be a simple explanation, and an examination of the data points to much complexity in trying to determine why sex crimes against children are more commonly reported in certain areas.
The Journal-World and 6News used 2000 U.S. Census data to compare this part of the city with the city as a whole, looking for some characteristics that might help explain the higher concentration of offenses.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Factors
The first question to ask is the most obvious: Are there just more people and children in this neighborhood?
In looking at both population density and percentage of the population under 18, there were no consistent differences. For instance, this section of the city is as heavily populated as northwestern Lawrence, where only six crimes were reported.
In regard to percentage of children in the area, again, there were differences among the areas of Lawrence, but this section of the city did not have the highest, or lowest, percentage of children.
Other socioeconomic factors, including education and poverty level, also did not point to any clear connection for this section of the city to have the most reported sexual assaults against children.
Local and national experts on the issue of child sexual assault and abuse say that pointing out specific factors in explaining where child sexual assaults occur is difficult.
Yolanda Jackson, a Kansas University psychology professor who specializes in child abuse, said the statistics can sometimes be misleading.
“Where someone lives or their economic status oversimplifies the issue a bit,” Jackson said.
Jackson pointed out different factors involved in the reporting of child sexual assaults that can skew statistics.
“It’s a reporting issue,” she said.
Sexual assaults that occur in poor families are more frequently reported because of the increased contact with social service agencies who may notice signs of abuse. Abuse in wealthier families is more likely to go unnoticed, she said.
Risk factors
But environmental risk factors for child sexual assaults do exist, said Laura McCloskey, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexual abuse. Factors sometimes associated with single-parent households, such as a lack of supervision and an increased number of people who come into the home, increase the risk of sexual assaults against children.
During the data comparison, the Journal-World found that the two areas of Lawrence with the most reported child sexual assaults also had the highest percentage of single-parent households. In part of both of the neighborhoods, the percentage of single-parent households was more than 16 percent, compared with the roughly 6 percent average for the city.
Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said that in cases his offices sees, lack of parental supervision can be a factor, but that it isn’t necessarily a case of parental neglect. He said that a lack of supervision sometimes results when single parents are forced to work longer hours and have few options with regard to whom they put in charge of their children.
The dynamic of a single-parent household, particularly households with single moms, can be a situation sex offenders exploit.
“Single moms are sometimes targeted by pedophiles,” McCloskey said.
And with the statistics that most sexual assaults against children are perpetrated by someone the child knows, looking in the neighborhood for potential threats may be less useful than looking in the home.
“What people need to realize is that the vast majority of sex offenders are in their circles,” McCloskey said. “Be more cautious about the people you bring into your home.” ..News Source.. by Shaun Hittle
U.S. Supreme Court Reverses 3rd Circuit Over Federal Agents' Delay Tactics
4-7-2009 Washington DC:
A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declared that federal agents cannot use unreasonable delay tactics to secure confessions.
Reversing the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the justices voted 5-4 in holding that even a "voluntary" confession obtained by federal authorities may be deemed inadmissible if more than six hours elapse between an arrest and a suspect's first court appearance.
The high court's decision in Corley v. United States was a victory for Assistant Federal Defender David L. McColgin in his first Supreme Court argument.
Writing for the majority, Justice David H. Souter found that lengthy delays before a suspect sees a judge can give the government too much leverage over someone who has been arrested.
"Federal agents would be free to question suspects for extended periods before bringing them out in the open, and we have always known what custodial secrecy leads to," Souter wrote in an opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Anthony Kennedy.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
McColgin represented Johnnie Corley, who was arrested on suspicion of robbing a credit union in Norristown, Pa. The FBI agents who arrested him did not take him to court for his initial appearance for nearly 30 hours, during which time they elicited a confession.
In his appeals, Corley argued that the agents violated a federal statute that prohibits police from persisting in questioning a suspect with the goal of securing a confession if doing so would result in an unreasonable delay in taking the suspect for his initial court appearance.
The lower courts had sharply split on the issue. Some held that §3501 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 was designed to completely overturn two Supreme Court rulings -- the 1943 ruling in McNabb v. United States and the 1957 ruling in Mallory v. United States -- with a rule that said a voluntary confession would always be admissible.
But other courts held that the statute merely modified the so-called McNabb-Mallory rule and still allowed for court review of potentially unfair delay tactics used to secure confessions.
Now the Supreme Court has sided with the latter camp and held that the McNabb-Mallory rule has been modified but remains in effect and must be strictly enforced.
"If the confession occurred before presentment and beyond six hours ... the court must decide whether delaying that long was unreasonable or unnecessary under the McNabb-Mallory cases, and if it was, the confession is to be suppressed," Souter wrote.
In McNabb and Mallory, the Supreme Court held that when federal officers violated an arrested person's "presentment right" by unnecessarily delaying in taking him before a magistrate, the remedy is that confessions elicited from the arrested person before presentment must be suppressed.
Congress set out to change the McNabb-Mallory rule by providing in §3501 that a confession "shall not be inadmissible solely because of delay."
But what proved most vexing to the courts was the final section of the statute, which laid out additional conditions, including that the confession was made "within six hours immediately following ... arrest or other detention."
When the 3rd Circuit heard Corley's appeal, the three-judge panel was split, with two judges saying they would follow the decisions of the 1st, 6th, 8th and 10th circuits, and a dissenting judge saying she would have followed the 2nd, 9th and District of Columbia circuits.
Judge Thomas L. Ambro concluded for the majority that the final section of the law "merely instructs trial courts that the inherently coercive effect of a lengthy delay in presentment is not sufficient, standing alone, to render a confession involuntary" where the delay is less than six hours.
But in dissent, Judge Dolores K. Sloviter said Ambro's analysis effectively rendered the final section of the statute moot.
"If a confession only had to be voluntary to be admissible despite the delay in presentation to a magistrate judge, there would be no reason for ... Section 3501(c)," Sloviter wrote.
Now Souter has sided with Sloviter, finding that the 3rd Circuit majority's reading of the statute was flawed because it would render the final section superfluous.
Souter rejected the Justice Department's argument that the first section of the statute unambiguously states that voluntary confessions are admissible and entirely eliminated the McNabb-Mallory rule.
Instead, Souter found that McColgin "has the better argument" when he urged the court to hold that the final section of the statute effectively modified the McNabb-Mallory rule by making it inapplicable to confessions given within the six hours, but keeping the rule alive when the delay in interrogation goes beyond six hours.
"The fundamental problem with the government's reading of Section 3501 is that it renders Section 3501(c) nonsensical and superfluous," Souter wrote.
In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. found that there was "nothing ambiguous" about the first section of the law which states that voluntary confessions are admissible.
"Although we normally presume that Congress 'means in a statute what it says there,' ... the court today concludes that §3501(a) does not mean what it says and that a voluntary confession may be suppressed under the McNabb-Mallory rule," Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. ..News Source.. by Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer
FBI database links long-haul truckers, serial killings
4-7-2009 National:
The FBI suspects that serial killers working as long-haul truckers are responsible for the slayings of hundreds of prostitutes, hitchhikers and stranded motorists whose bodies have been dumped near highways over the last three decades.
Federal authorities first made the connection about five years ago while helping police link a trucker to a string of unsolved killings along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma and several other states. After that, the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to track suspicious slayings and suspect truckers.
A computer database maintained by the FBI has grown to include information on more than 500 female crime victims, most of whom were killed and their bodies discarded at truck stops, motels and other locations along popular trucking routes crisscrossing the U.S.
The database also has information on scores of truckers who've been charged with killings or rapes committed near highways or who are suspects in such crimes, officials said. Authorities said they do not have statistics on whether driving trucks ranks high on the list of occupations of known serial killers.
But the pattern in roadside body dumps and other evidence has prompted many investigators to speculate that the mobility, lack of supervision and access to potential victims that come with the job make it a good cover for someone inclined to kill.
"You've got a mobile crime scene," one investigator said. "You can pick a girl up on the East Coast, kill her two states away and then dump her three states after that."
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Although some local police agencies have been briefed on the program, the FBI had not publicized its existence outside law enforcement until earlier this year, when officials agreed to show The Times the inner workings of the operation and share details of some of their cases.
Housed in a nondescript brick building on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., FBI analysts pore over reports and computer entries looking for patterns in slayings from California to Connecticut.
Since the program began, more than two dozen killings have been solved, authorities said.
Michael Harrigan, who oversees the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, said the program helps local police "connect the dots" to slayings outside their jurisdictions. He said most of the victims led high-risk lifestyles that left them particularly vulnerable.
"We don't want to scare the public and make it seem like every time you stop for gas you should look over your shoulder," Harrigan said. "Many of these victims made poor choices, but that doesn't mean they deserved to die."
Though most of the entries in the database pertain to unsolved slayings, cases that authorities consider "cleared," or solved, remain in it so that investigators may potentially link additional crimes to a known perpetrator. There are also entries on sexual assaults and missing-person cases linked to highway locations. FBI officials declined to provide The Times with a more detailed breakdown of the database's contents.
The program's success depends largely on local police departments' voluntarily providing data on seemingly random killings, sexual assaults and other violent crimes to the FBI, where it is stored in a massive computer database. FBI analysts can query the computer to spot patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This was exactly the kind of help Terri Turner was looking for when she turned to the FBI in early 2004. Turner, a senior criminal intelligence analyst with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, was working on a string of seven slayings along I-40 in which the victims were truck-stop prostitutes who had been killed and left at roadside locations.
Turner's inquiry was given to an analyst with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which maintains the agency's crime database. The analyst found that the database contained more than 250 cases of roadside female crime victims, many of them bearing enough similarities to suggest patterns in the violence. Subsequent searches and Internet research bumped the number to 350. As a result, bureau officials created a separate computer database to track such crimes and assigned an analyst to work full time on the serial killer program.
Later that year, Turner's suspected killer was identified as John Robert Williams, a 28-year-old trucker.
Williams and his girlfriend had kidnapped a woman from a casino in Mississippi, killed her and dumped her body along a rural county road, authorities said. Concerned that they'd been seen leaving the casino with the victim, Williams' girlfriend panicked and called police, telling them that she and Williams had found the body. Their story quickly unraveled, and the pair were arrested for murder.
During subsequent interrogations, police said Williams confessed to more than a dozen slayings -- including many of the cases Turner had been investigating. He had detailed knowledge of how the crimes had been committed, such as whether the women were killed by manual strangulation or with the use of a ligature, according to authorities. He explained how some had been sexually assaulted, in some cases after they were dead, they said.
Williams knew, for example, that one victim, Buffie Rae Brawley, had the word "Ebony" tattooed on her right thigh, investigators said. And he knew that the truck-stop prostitute had deep lacerations on her head, which he said she suffered when he struck her with a "tire thumper," a trucker's tool used to bounce off truck tires to gauge their pressure.
Police said Williams told them that Brawley solicited him for sex at a truck stop in Indianapolis.
"The second she tapped on my window, she was a dead woman," one investigator quoted the trucker as saying.
Williams has since recanted his confession, and there is no DNA linking him to any of the slayings. But Sgt. Larry Hallmark of the Grapevine, Texas, Police Department said he and other investigators do not believe that Williams' confession was bogus.
"He actually bragged that we wouldn't find any DNA because he didn't have sex with them in the traditional sense," said Hallmark, who interviewed Williams several times and has submitted a potential death penalty case to the district attorney in his county outside Dallas.
Hallmark said investigators from other jurisdictions "are kind of waiting in line" to see what happens with his case.
The investigator of Brawley's death is among them.
"We're about 10th in line," said Capt. Clarke Fine of Hendricks County, Ind. "I figure if Texas fries him, we're good."
Spotting patterns
For the most part, the FBI analysts assigned to the serial killer program have spent their time combing through crime data that is months or even years old for patterns that might link slayings to one another or to a suspect. But occasionally, they have spotted patterns as they were actually occurring. That was the case two years ago when authorities noticed that dead prostitutes who had been shot with a .22-caliber gun were being found along highways in Georgia and Tennessee.
The body of one victim, Sara Hulbert, was found behind a truck stop in Nashville.
Sgt. Pat Postiglione, a veteran homicide investigator with the Nashville Police Department, was assigned the case. He called the FBI and learned that Hulbert's killing fit a pattern of recent slayings and might have been the work of serial killer, something he'd already suspected.
With little to go on, he and another detective began reviewing videotape taken at the Truck Stops of America site in downtown Nashville where the victim had been found. It was mind-numbing stuff: big rigs pulling in and out of one of the busiest truck stops in the state, like planes taking off and landing at LAX.
The only thing that caught Postiglione's eye was a yellow 18-wheeler that seemed to come and go within about 30 minutes. The interval seemed short compared with that of other truckers, who spent at least an hour -- or even several -- as they fueled up, ate and maybe slept for a while.
As leads go, it was pretty thin. But then the detective got lucky. As Postiglione approached the truck stop the morning after watching the tape, he said, he saw what he thought was the yellow rig heading toward a nearby area of East Nashville known for prostitution.
Postiglione said he followed as the driver slowly wheeled his truck down streets lined with warehouses, budget motels and liquor stores. After a few minutes, the driver returned to the truck stop and parked, he said.
His curiosity piqued, Postiglione approached the driver's door and knocked. After a few seconds, a disheveled-looking man emerged from the cab, the detective said.
His name was Bruce Mendenhall. He was of average height and build with a sort of pinched face. His shirt was unbuttoned and he wore no shoes. As Postiglione sized him up, he said he noticed a speck of blood on the man's thumb and what he thought were several corresponding drops on the driver's door of the truck.
Though there could have been many reasonable explanations for the blood, Postiglione said, he was suspicious.
"Something -- I don't know if it was instinct or whatever -- was telling me, 'Don't let this guy leave before I look in his truck,' " the detective recalled.
According to Postiglione, Mendenhall calmly agreed to submit to a DNA swab and signed a consent form granting the detective permission to search the truck.
The officer said he stepped up into the cavernous cab, large enough to stand up in and walk around. He took a couple of steps into the sleeper compartment and sat down on the bed. To his left, behind the driver's seat, was a plastic bag. In it was some women's clothing covered in blood, he said. Also recovered from the cab were a cellphone and an ATM card belonging to a young woman who had gone missing in Indianapolis just 12hours earlier, authorities said. She has not been heard from since and is presumed dead.
By the time crime-scene technicians were finished with the cab, authorities have said, they had found blood or DNA linking Mendenhall to at least seven victims. He has since been charged with four slayings, officials said. Mendenhall has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in Nashville.
Postiglione said the timeline the FBI put together showed that the intervals between killings were getting shorter and shorter.
"He was spiraling out of control," the detective said.
Other targets
Not all the victims attributed to alleged serial killer truck drivers have been prostitutes whose work made them easy targets. About a month after Mendenhall's arrest, another long-haul trucker, Adam Leroy Lane, parked his rig in a suburban Boston neighborhood and slipped through an unlocked door into the home of Kevin and Jeannie McDonough.
The McDonoughs were lying in bed when they heard a whimper from the adjacent bedroom where their 15-year-old daughter, Shea, had been sleeping. They went to see what was wrong and found a masked figure holding a knife to their daughter's throat. Kevin McDonough, a slight but muscular utility contractor, grabbed the intruder, applied a chokehold and wrestled him to the floor. His wife grabbed the knife.
When police arrived, they discovered that Lane was armed with three knives, a length of wire and a martial arts throwing star. In the cab of his truck was a DVD titled "Hunting Humans," about a serial killer.
A Massachusetts state trooper who earlier that year had attended an FBI presentation in Reno about the serial killer program sent an e-mail to the bureau.
"I just want to make sure this guy is on your radar," the trooper wrote.
That message ultimately led to Lane's being connected to slayings in two other states, for which he is awaiting trial. He pleaded guilty to the Massachusetts charges and was sentenced to 50 years in state prison.
J. Patrick Barnes, a New Jersey prosecutor who charged Lane with one of the murders, said the FBI was instrumental in helping solve his case.
"We're so busy looking at cases in our own towns, our own counties and our own regions that we sometimes miss what's going on around us," Barnes said.
"You can't connect the dots if you don't know what the dots are."
Access to a database
Hanging in a cubicle in the FBI office near Quantico, Va., is a map of the United States. It's covered in red dots representing some of the 500-plus cases in the Highway Serial Killings Initiative database. For all the crimes they represent, FBI supervisory agent John Molnar said he thinks the number of such offenses has been "grossly underreported."
Molnar said he hopes that will change in the wake of a decision last year to make the database available to law enforcement officials online, allowing police with a password to submit case information and make their own queries.
Though many of the dots on the map now appear connected to one another by similarities -- such as the killers' modes of operation -- the vast majority are not connected to any known suspect.
They are potential serial slayings waiting to be solved, the FBI says.
One involves the 2005 discovery of a decomposing human leg by ATV riders roaring through the woods near Interstate 55 in central Illinois. Painted toenails suggested that the leg, and another discovered nearby, belonged to a woman. But with little else to go on, the case went cold.
Three years later, an FBI analyst used a partial tattoo on one of the legs to help state police link the remains to Lindsay Harris, a 21-year-old call girl who had vanished from the Las Vegas Strip -- some 1,400 miles away -- about two weeks before the limbs were found.
She was the third Las Vegas sex worker whose dismembered remains were found along a highway from 2003 to 2005, prompting authorities to speculate that a trucker or someone else who frequents the highways was responsible for the slayings.
A fourth young woman who disappeared from the Strip and is presumed dead is also thought be part of the pattern. Her remains have not been recovered.
Mike Jennings, the Illinois State Police special agent who worked with the FBI to identify Harris' remains, said he plans to retire in a couple of years and that the case of the fourth woman will weigh heavily on his mind if it remains unsolved.
"My gut feeling," Jeninngs said, "is that it's a trucker."
..News Source.. by Scott Glover
CA- Child Porn Traffickers Cited in Missing Child Search
UPDATE 4-11-09: It appears that "A Sunday school teacher" has been arrested and charged in this case. Thanks to a reader tip..
Post by eAdvocate 4-7-2009 California:
In a precedent that could have a major impact nationwide, California police say they are looking at known child pornography traffickers in a missing child case.
(TRACY, Calif.) - Police in Tracy, California, a city of 80,000 just east of San Francisco, are searching for an 8 year-old child, Sandra Cantu, who disappeared March 27th.
Now, according to the Tracy Press, investigators in the case say they are looking at 60 individuals in the Tracy area who have been identified trafficking in child pornography, along with 78 "registered" sex offenders.
It is believed to be the first time in the U.S. that police have publicly acknowledged the huge population of known but not arrested child pornography suspects in a missing child case.
While visiting the homes of "registered" sex offenders is common in missing children cases, the public is mostly unaware that U.S. law enforcement has also identified hundreds of thousands of criminals trafficking in child pornography.
Fewer than 2% of these suspects are ever investigated, as police and lawmakers focus on other priorities.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Most law enforcement agencies are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of these suspects, because doing so would put huge numbers of unsolved crimes on their boards... crimes they are not now investigating.
Pursuing the 60 known Tracy child pornography traffickers would, without question, lead to the rescue of many local children who are suffering at the hands of sexual predators, many within their own homes.
If authorities follow through on their plan, they will seek 60 subpoenas and then locate and interview these individuals. Tracy could then expect a wave of successful child pornography and child abuse investigations and prosecutions.Excellent police work, announce -in the news- what you are going to do beforehand, so you can go to an empty house and catch no one! Very logical, good sense Inspector Gadget...
Tracy authorities, under intense pressure to find Sandra Cantu, have now set an incredibly important national precedent.
Their willingness to acknowledge at-large child pornography traffickers in their midst shows courage... and could help locate a child victim. ..News Source.. by Salem-News.com
NH- Sex Offender Released After Missed Deadline
4-7-2009 New Hampshire:
Officials Had Sought To Commit Man After Sentence
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- A convicted sex offender who officials wanted to keep behind bars was released from prison Monday, and officials said a glitch in the system could be to blame.
In April 2008, the Hillsborough County Attorney's Office sought to have Richard Hilton, 34, committed for up to five years following the end of his prison sentence. But the Superior Court didn't file the proper paperwork in a timely fashion, so Hilton was released.
Hilton plans to live in Manchester and is required to register with police.
Hilton and Raymond Fournier, both of whom have served their full sentences but their time in prison was extended under a law called the Sexual Violent Predators Act. If a judge determines a sex offender who has finished his sentence is likely to reoffend if not locked up, the offender can be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit in the prison for five years at a time.
Fournier's lawyers challenged his extended sentence, saying the guidelines of the Sexual Violent Predators Act indicate a judge must make that ruling within 10 days. In Fournier's case, the judge took more than 30.
The state Supreme Court agreed and Fournier's sentence was dismissed. Fournier was released from prison on Friday to Mount Vernon.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Hilton's lawyers also challenged, saying the judge in his case also took too long, and Hilton was also set free.
"The court ordered him released and we had to release him," Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons said.
Under the Supreme Court ruling, the Department of Corrections had no choice but to let the men go, a representative said.
A spokesman for the state Supreme Court said that on Tuesday, the court will issue a directive making sure that "mandatory time limits are complied with" when it comes to committing a person as a sexually violent predator.
Other than registering with the towns where they live, there will be no monitoring.
"They've reached their maximum sentence, they've paid their debt to society and they can go on and live their lives," Lyons said.
The governor's office also weighed in, with a spokesman saying the issue should have been a priority for the courts. The spokesman said a sexual predator shouldn't be released because the courts missed a deadline, and the governor plans to work with lawmakers to draft legislation to address the situation. ..News Source.. by WMUR9
MD- 'Sexting' Challenges Prosecutors To Walk Fine Line
4-7-2009 Maryland:
Prosecutors in Maryland are working with schools to deal with the growing number of teenagers sending nude pictures of themselves over the phone to friends and others.
While not strictly illegal if consensual, sexting, as the practice has come to be known, has led to prosecutions in some cases nationwide.
Local prosecutors say they are responding on a case by case basis, and do not, as a usual practice, charge minors who are caught sexting.
"Does the transmittal of a photograph constitute child pornography, and, if it does, we want to get to the bottom of it," Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellengerger said. "Most of the cases don't qualify as child pornography."
Problems may develop, however, if the photos end up on the web, where the sender no longer has any control over their use.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The main effort, Shellenberger said, is to educate students, parents, and others about the dangers and the reach of the law.
"The possession, the making, and the sending of child pornography is against the law," Shellenberger said.
A misdemeanor carries a two year jail sentence, he said. A felony has a 10 year sentence. "It depends on the kind of photograph that you're sending," Shellenberger said.
"What we're trying to concentrate on is serious child pornography," Shellenberger said, "And those folks go to jail."
"Sending images of sexual matters is child pornography, no matter how you cut it," Assistant U.S. Attorney in Baltimore Bonnie Greenberg said.
"Generally, our office does not prosecute juveniles," Greenberg said.
Her office is working with the state's attorneys offices to help educate the children to stop the conduct, she said.
The problem, she said, is once it gets on a friend's computer, it can go on the web, and "once it's there, it's there forever."
About 1 in 5 teens surveyed in the latest study reported sexting.
Several teens in Pennsylvania were charged earlier this year with child pornography after sending images of themselves on their cell phones. ..News Source.. by Steve Fermier
Loretta Laroche: 'Sexting' nonsense calls for a return to scare tactics
Post by eAdvocate 4-7-2009 National:
I was blown away by the article on teenagers “sexting.” How and why do you get to the place where you think it’s OK to send nude or partially nude pictures to friends or strangers?
OK, the obvious answer is because you can, and the new technologies make it easy to do so. But what fascinates me is how more and more individuals, not just teens, seem to have less and less dignity about flaunting their body parts.
It seems that “letting it all hang out” is becoming a euphemism for the 21st century. Howard Stern became the quintessential “shock jock” by spewing four letter words and discussing topics that would have made my grandmother whip out her rosary beads and pray for his salvation.
Mr. Stern’s repartee has become commonplace, so the ante must go up from loose lips to uncovering hips. We have so many ways to be seen and heard, and Andy Warhol’s prediction that everyone wants 15 minutes of fame is coming true.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter how that fame is achieved.
Pride or common sense seem to pale when the lure of the camera is there. What amazes me is that the individuals who expose themselves don’t seem to think twice about how they look.
When I was a teen, I don’t think I would have shown the cat my naked self. I don’t think most of my friends would have, either. Maybe the all those messages from the nuns and my mother scared the living hell out of me.
Going back to fright tactics might be a good idea. It just might stop some of the flaunting. ..News Source.. by Loretta LaRoche
NJ- Feds push states to get tougher with sex offender controls
4-7-2009 New Jersey:
License plate numbers, regularly updated photos and workplace addresses of convicted sex offenders will soon be available online as part of a federal initiative to revamp sex offender laws.
The U.S. Department of Justice is pushing states, including New Jersey, to change their laws to comply with guidelines under the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notifica-tion Act, or SORNA, or lose full eligibility for a grant program that covered nearly $4 million of statewide law enforcement costs during 2008.
The federal initiative aims to close loopholes in Megan's Law and is intended as a baseline, so states can choose to adopt stricter guidelines, according to the Department of Justice Web site.
Megan's Law was created in New Jersey after Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old girl from Hamilton Township, Mercer County, was raped and killed in 1994 by her neighbor, a twice-convicted sex offender. It soon was adopted by other states. The law establishes a tier system based on re-offense risk and a tier-based notification process. The law also requires authorities to publish information on certain offenders in a public, searchable Internet database.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The initiative would change the online component of Megan's Law, including notification and registration of sex offenders. The federal government will provide updated software and fully funded training to enable a new online registry, which will publish more information than is available now under Megan's Law about sex offenders in New Jersey, such as work and school addresses and vehicle license plates and descriptions. The guidelines also require Internet registration for sex offenders convicted of less severe crimes than it does now.
After reviewing the federal guidelines, Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said Tuesday his office would change its policies according to what state and federal legislators dictate, but expects New Jersey lawmakers to also maintain nondigital notification procedures.
"We do it now pretty effectively, so I see no reason to (change) it, especially because not everyone has (Internet access)," Housel said.
Like other county prosecutors in New Jersey, Housel and his office handle community notification. Whom they notify depends on an offender's tier. Only local law enforcement gets word of Tier I offenders, the least likely to re-offend, while Tier III offenders, who pose the highest recidivism risk, prompt notification to police, schools, neighbors and community groups likely to encounter the offender. Law enforcement officials often send hard-copy notices or go door-to-door for notification warranted for Tier II and III offenders.
New Jersey could opt to continue doing so, despite SORNA not requiring it.
When asked whether the expanded information database could pose a threat to sex offenders themselves, Housel said he has no control over federal mandates and potential abuses of the system. But he said his office would prosecute anything criminal, which now includes cyberstalking.
Housel and his 20 counterparts throughout the state will have at least 15 months to contemplate SORNA and its effect on Megan's Law in New Jersey.
The Department of Justice initially told states the changes had to be made by July, but have since allowed them to apply for extensions until 2010 and, next year, 2011. As of Tuesday, the department agreed to give New Jersey and 22 other states more time, according to the department's Web site.
Peter Aseltine, spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, declined comment on the pending changes because the office is in the process of determining what needs to happen to implement them. ..News Source.. by EMILY PREVITI Staff Writer
Man accused of urging inmate to kill himself
4-7-2009 Canada:
An Ontario man accused of counselling someone to commit suicide opted Wednesday to let a jury decide his fate.
Reudi Leslie Schori, 41, of no fixed address faces a March 19 charge of counselling a man to kill himself.
He's also charged with performing an indecent act Jan. 15 on the bus that brought him from Ontario to Fredericton and breaching an Ontario undertaking to reside at a Pembroke, Ont., apartment between Jan. 15 and March 18.
The charge of counselling suicide stems from an allegation that Schori tried to convince a fellow prisoner in the cells at the city police station to kill himself.
It appeared Wednesday that Crown prosecutor William Corby and duty counsel Randy Maillet hammered out an agreement outside the courtroom that Schori would plead guilty and a joint recommendation on sentencing would be presented to the court.
Schori reportedly approved the agreement, so parties were taken aback when Schori opted to be tried by a Court of Queen's Bench judge and jury on the suicide and undertaking violation charges.
He also pleaded not guilty to the indecent act count.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
His provincial court trial on that charge was scheduled for April 15.
When it was suggested that preliminary hearings for the other two charges be held the same day, Schori objected.
He said he needed to get disclosure from the Crown on those charges and needed more time to prepare for the preliminary hearings.
Judge Mary Jane Richards reminded Schori that he's been remanded and any delay would lead to more time behind bars waiting for trial.
Schori insisted, and the hearings were scheduled for May 22.
He also asked that two different judges hear the preliminary hearings since the charges aren't connected.
Richards said that wasn't necessary.
Schori apparently plans to represent himself at trial.
"Now, do I have to wear that little funny robe?" he asked the judge, referring to the black gowns that lawyers wear in court.
"Funny guy," Richards answered. ..News Source.. by DON MACPHERSON
Monday, April 6, 2009
TX- Oops: DPS Apologizes for Listing Woman as Sex Offender
(Post by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Texas:
DPS blames data entry error for mistake
The Texas Department of Public Safety apologized Friday and accepted blame for mistakenly posting a Dallas woman's name and photo on the state's sex offender Web site for nearly five years.
"After investigating the facts in this case, it is clear that a data entry error at DPS led to this mistake," said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger. "DPS deeply regrets the error and apologizes for any inconvenience."
The woman, Rachel Marquez, 20, of Dallas, said she's glad DPS admitted its mistake.
"I'll take the apology," she said. "I accept it."
She also said she is talking to lawyers about her options.
"I don't know how many people have seen it or how many jobs it has cost me," she said. "I'm just now finding this out and it's been six or seven years."
Marquez learned she was on the list when she tried to move into a new apartment. Managers denied her application and informed her she was a registered sex offender.
Marquez logged on to the Web site to see for herself.
"My heart just dropped," she said. "How could this be me?"
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The problem apparently stemmed from a minor trespassing arrest in 2003 when she was 13 years old. A data entry operator at DPS mistakenly checked the "sex offender" box on her entry, automatically publishing her information on the sex offender registry, Vinger said.
"Just someone clicked the wrong thing and it happened," she said. "That's crazy, that I had to be the one, you know?"
Marquez, a mother of two, is studying criminal justice at Garland's Remington College and wants to do crime scene investigations for police.
DPS removed her name after her father informed the department of the mistake.
The agency said its records showed she had been on the Web site since September 2003 or April 2004.
"We are in the process of reviewing our procedures to make sure there are sufficient safeguards to prevent this type of problem," Vinger said. "Our director will be composing a letter of apology."
Vinger said he knows of no other cases in which someone was mistakenly identified publicly as a sex offender.
"This could happen to anyone," Marquez said. "There's no telling how many people think of me in a weird way. 'That's Rachel. I saw her on the sex offender list.'" ..News Source.. by Scott Gordon
IA- Bills shaped at Statehouse with doors shut
I will skip a major portion of the article to get to the portion about sex offenders:
(Post by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Iowa:
Some Iowa lawmakers want to require public officials to be more transparent about new policies they are considering. Others want to mandate that the state disclose more information about the state budget.
But when it comes to being open about their own actions, state legislators' approach has increasingly been: "Do as I say, not as I do."
Legislators are hammering out issues, particularly contentious ones, in private caucuses and "working groups" rather than in public forums at the Capitol.
Open-government advocates complain the approach - used frequently this legislative session - is antithetical to the democratic process, squelches public input and can result in bad policy.
For three months, one group of legislators has wrangled in secret over how to tackle dicey sex offender legislation - with a 2010 election approaching and powerful interest groups demanding action. Leaders of that group say they are waiting for party leaders and the governor to sign off on their ideas before making proposed law changes public.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
"They might just as well put a bubble around the Capitol and duct-tape the doors shut," said Marty Ryan, a longtime lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. "They're leading us to a bad, bad place."
JUMPING FORWARD to relevant SO discussions:
They also encourage committee chairs to assemble working groups to hash out touchy bills in private, especially if openness is perceived as possibly putting seats at risk at election time.
"Some people are like, 'What's with the behind closed doors?' " said Rep. David Tjepkes, R-Gowrie, one of 10 legislators involved in a working group on the sex offender bill.
Tjepkes said his group's subject matter is sensitive by nature, necessitating talk about specific offenders and their victims. But he admits there's political gravity in saying the wrong thing in a crowd.
"I'd be naive and stupid to say some things in public," he said. "That's putting a head on the chopping block just to have the competition chop it off for you."
The Iowa Constitution says the doors of the House and Senate "shall be open, except on such occasions as may require secrecy." In practical application, that has meant legislative leaders decide for themselves when they want to make public policy decisions in private.
City councils and boards of supervisors are prohibited from going into closed sessions except for reasons prescribed by open-records law, but there are no limits to the reasons legislators may give in deciding to meet privately before voting on a bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said it's true legislators are holding more private meetings, and it's debatable whether that's a good thing. The move toward more secrecy, he said, has followed a move toward more cutthroat politics in the last 20 years.
While sunlight is good, he said, "the politics of public discussion has also damaged our ability to move good policy."Case study: Secret plan for sex offender laws
One big drawback of such secrecy is becoming apparent this year: With just two or three weeks remaining in the session, the public is only beginning to hear details about major pieces of legislation - health care initiatives, tax plans, potential money for flood relief and new jobs - that stand to affect their lives.
A case in point: The sex offender working group has yet to hold a single public meeting on legislation to scale back the state's 2,000-foot residency requirement for sex offenders, create safe zones aimed at protecting children, and bring Iowa more in line with the federal Adam Walsh Act.
Legislators promise to unveil their measure for the first time this week in a public bipartisan subcommittee before it is voted on by the Senate.
Still, some people believe the hour may now be too late to hear from groups that have a major stake in the outcome and fix any problems in proposed legislation.
"I would be very concerned about the Legislature rushing forward ... without a measured look and input from groups with a major stake in what's happening," said Beth Barnhill of Iowa's Coalition Against Sexual Abuse. "We've made a lot of mistakes in Iowa."
States' efforts to comply with the Adam Walsh Act have caused controversy and headaches, so much so that Congress is reviewing the law. However, Iowa legislators have ignored a plea to have a multidisciplinary team evaluate implications for Iowa.
"It's a waste of state resources to implement strategies that don't work," complained Barnhill, who noted the state has already been given a year's reprieve to comply with the federal law.
Sen. Keith Kreiman, D-Bloomfield, and Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield, acknowledged last week that they have been waiting to get Culver and all four caucuses in the House and Senate to agree on the legislation first.
"If (Culver's) not on board, everybody's gonna run like a chicken," Baudler said. "But don't worry, there's still time. People will have a chance to look at it."
Baudler acknowledged, however, that it was unlikely lawmakers would accept amendments after the amended bill goes public.
Ryan said that when lawmakers don't listen to experts and others with a significant stake, they come up with legislation like the 2,000-foot law - a highly controversial measure passed in 2002 that aims to reduce child sex abuse by prohibiting convicted offenders from living near child care centers and schools.
Almost universally, law enforcement officials and experts say the law doesn't work. But Ryan said it was passed late in the session with too little debate.
"The only vote against it in the Senate was Sen. Johnie Hammond from Ames," Ryan said. "She predicted we would have colonies of sex offenders - and she predicted correctly."
Gronstal said that bill was a better example of the "radioactiveness" of dealing with some touchy issues with all eyes watching.
In the end, he said, it was almost impossible not to pass the legislation. "There was the sense that if you voted against the bill, you didn't care about protecting kids," he said.
..News Source.. by LEE ROOD
MO- Missouri Supreme Court rejects challenge from sex offender
(Post by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Missouri:
The Missouri Supreme Court rejected a challenge from a sex offender who incurred a prison sentence when he did not register a change of address notice within 10 days.
The Supreme Court previously ruled that it was unconstitutional to require sex offenders convicted of crimes before Jan. 1, 1995, to register with local law enforcement authorities. Such a move, the court argued, was a retrospective function disallowed allowed under the Missouri Constitution.
A Hannibal resident named William Holden argued that he fell into that category, since the date of his offense was before the law went into effect but the guilty plea came into effect several months after the law became active.
Before he pleaded guilty to committing sodomy on a 5-year-old in March 1995, the state of Missouri enacted a law that, among other things, required individuals registered as sex offenders to notify local sheriff's departments of moving to a new residence within 10 days.
Holden was released from prison in 2001. After his release, Holden registered as a sex offender with the Marion County Sheriff's Department and moved into a basement.
In August 2007, Holden alerted the Marion County Sheriff's Office that he had been living out of his car and that he needed to re-register as a sex offender by the end of the month.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
An official with the sheriff's department told him of the 10-day requirement, and the next day Holden provided a written statement that he had moved residences more than a month before. He was subsequently arrested and eventually sentenced to four years in prison by a trial court.
In a unanimous ruling, the court found that the law did apply to Holden. Writing for the court, Judge William Ray Price Jr. wrote that previous court decisions found the time of the guilty plea -- not the date of purported crime -- triggered the registration requirements.
"In this case, Holden was charged with two counts of sodomy with a child under the age of fourteen years," Price wrote. "When Holden pled guilty to this offense, the registration requirements had been in effect for several months. [The statute] as applied to Holden, is constitutional."
Price also wrote that state did not err in not disclosing a number of Holden's registration forms. The court also rejected arguments that the decision against Holden was prejudiced when his victim's age was relayed in court.
"The victim's age is relevant to prove that Holden was previously convicted of a sexual offense involving a child under the age of fourteen years. ... To the extent that the age is inflammatory, it is the result of defendant's own conduct and does not outweigh its prohibitive effect," Price wrote.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Richard Teitelman wrote that Holden's conviction and sentence "unintentionally may undermine future enforcement efforts."
"Had Mr. Holden realized voluntary re-registration would land him in jail for four years, he would have been faced with a significant incentive to abscond," Teitelman wrote. "If the purpose of the registration requirements is to permit authorities and the public to stay apprise of an offenders' residence, then it may prove unwise to impose harsh punishments on those offenders, like Mr. Holden, who undertake good faith but technically erroneous efforts at compliance." Judge Michael Wolff concurred in Teitelman's opinion.
Irene Karns, the public defender representing Holden, could not be reached for comment. Travis Ford, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said the effect of the decision is that Holden will remain confined in a Licking, Mo., prison.
The case is State v. Holden, SC89635. (Decision available in the files area of our S_News Group) ..News Source.. by Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Jason Rosenbaum
VA- Problems linger at sex-offender rehab center
4-6-2009 Virginia:
A new report finds that problems at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation didn't improve much in 2008, despite the center's having moved to its new $62 million facility in Nottoway County.
The program is the maximum-security home for 130 of the most dangerous sex offenders in Virginia. They are being held indefinitely -- at $131,000 apiece each year -- under civil-court orders for treatment after their prison sentences ended.
Since the program's beginning in a makeshift facility in Dinwiddie County in late 2003, state auditors have found fault with high staff turnover and the need for more treatment. Many of the center's residents even view the new facility as worse in ways than the prisons they came from.
"Clearly, there are still growing pains and challenges at VCBR," Meghan McGuire, spokeswoman for the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, said of the March 23 report by the office of the inspector general.
McGuire said building a long-range recovery program will take time. "We are seeing improvement to morale," she said. McGuire also said an advisory committee was formed last year and is working on recommendations to help the center meet its mission.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that sex offenders with certain mental conditions can be committed civilly by courts and held beyond their prison terms for rehabilitation and treatment -- but not for further punishment.
The new report found that residents received an average of 6.6 hours a week of treatment.
Though an improvement on the 2.5 hours a week from the year before, the report said "active treatment levels . . . still remain much lower than desirable for an effective treatment program. Resident boredom and inactivity continue, with significant [adverse] behavioral results."
The staff turnover rate at the center, which has great impact on treatment and other issues, was 47.5 percent in the year that ended last June. The rate has hovered around 50 percent since the program began. For medical and nursing staff, the turnover rate was nearly 100 percent from 2007.
Staffing at such facilities across the country tends to be a problem because of the type of offenders held and because many are located in rural locations.
Concerns on the part of residents "include overly Spartan cells and furniture; a harsh environment; very limited resident privilege levels with regard to phone use, mail, television access and personal items; and limited educational, vocational and recreation opportunities."
Concerns on the part of staff include their personal safety around the offenders and the belief that management sides with the residents too often in disputes.
"Disruptive, noisy, angry residents raise tension levels among staff. Staff report that they hear from residents that residents know they cannot be touched and they taunt staff that they will be reported if the staff infringes on their 'freedom' to behave as they wish," the report said.
Among other things, the department has hired a vocational coordinator, but there are still no jobs for residents for a number of reasons.
The report noted a Catch-22 in the center's efforts to get jobs for residents. Prisons can provide jobs for inmates at 20 to 40 cents an hour under an exception to federal labor law. It appears, however, that people in a civil-commitment center must be paid at least minimum wage.
The department noted that since the inspector general's most recent visit in November, 20 residents have enrolled in college-level correspondence courses.
In an effort to improve the living conditions, some wooden beds from the former facility, located near Petersburg, have been moved to Nottoway, and the existing "slab beds" are being widened and getting more comfortable mattresses. ..News Source.. by Frank Green
MS- Bill changes vote for parole
I can hear the equal protections under the law lawsuit coming with this new bill, soon to be law.
(Post by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Mississippi:
JACKSON — Convicted sex offenders and murderers will have to meet a higher standard to be paroled in Mississippi under a bill awaiting Gov. Haley Barbour’s signature.
The legislation reauthorizing the state Parole Board changes the vote needed to release inmates convicted of murder or a sexual offense. It currently only takes a simple majority on the five-member board. The bill would require a 4-1 vote.
The proposed change is a result of the furor that arose after the board voted 3-2 earlier this year to release Douglas Hodgkin from prison.
Hodgkin was convicted in 1987 of capital murder in the death of Jean Elizabeth Gillies, a University of Mississippi graduate student in speech pathology. Hodgkin, of Winchester, Ky., was a junior business major at Ole Miss at the time of the slaying.
A version of the bill that passed the Senate last month addressed parole and pardons. The legislation proposed requiring the governor to contact the district attorney’s office where the crime occurred and then schedule the hearing before granting the pardon. It also required a unanimous vote by the board to parole murderers and sex offenders.
Those provisions were eliminated when House and Senate negotiators began work on the conference report, or final version of the bill.
Sen. Alan Nunnelee, a Republican from Tupelo, said he voted against the conference report because he believes there should be a unanimous vote “on the most heinous of crimes” before a prisoner is released.
Barbour spokesman Dan Turner said the bill is under review and he didn’t know if the governor would sign it. ..News Source.. by SHELIA BYRD
GA- Georgia sex offender law shot down
(Post by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Georgia:
Allan Hunt Show Description: A Federal Judge must agree with me because this past week he shot down a law requiring registered sex offenders from living 1000-feet from where kids congregate as being unconstitutional. Finally! Do we not realize that if we let these people out of prisons, we owe it to them to reestablish themselves in society. How does it help anyone forcing them "underground." Join the conversation as we look at forgiveness and redemption for people who rarely get it.
The Allan Hunt show is referring to a court order issued 3-31-2009 which we reported here.
MA- State Rep. Todd Smola of Palmer files bill that would make it a felony for a school employee to have sex with a student 17 or older
Here is an odd title which almost implies it is OK to have sex with those under 17. Bet the journalist wishes he wrote this one differently.
(Posted by eAdvocate) 4-6-2009 Masachusetts:
PALMER - At the request of the town's school superintendent, state Rep. Todd M. Smola, R-Palmer, has filed legislation that would make it a felony for a school employee to have sex with a student who is 17 or older.
Superintendent Gerald A. Fournier sought the legislation in the wake of suspicions about a former school employee last year, according to Smola. The male employee resigned last fall after an investigation into whether he had inappropriate interactions with several female high school students.
"The law would make it a felony if a student and a staff member had a relationship, even if she is of consensual age," Smola said.
Current state law prohibits sex with a person under 16, a charge known as statutory rape. It carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Smola's legislation was filed at a time when school and police officials were questioning the relationship of a Holyoke teacher and student. However, that case would not fall under the provisions of the proposed law.
Holyoke school teacher Lisa M. Lavoie, 24, of Ludlow, and a 15-year-old student were reported missing in February. The two were discovered on Feb. 23 at a motel in Morgantown, W.Va. The boy has been placed in a foster family, and Lavoie awaits prosecution on a charge of enticing a minor. If convicted, she faces a maximum penalty of five years in state prison.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The case would not fall under the proposed law because Lavoie has not been charged with having sex with the student, and the child in question is a minor and not of consenting age. If Lavoie should be charged with statutory rape, a prospect raised by the prosecutor during her arraignment, the case would be covered under existing law because the student is younger than 17.
Smola's proposal calls for a maximum penalty of 10 years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for a school employee who has sex with a student aged 17 or older. Smola said he researched the laws in several states, and a bill was drafted by the House of Representatives legal counsel.
Smola expects some resistance to the proposal because it would cover consensual relationships between any school employee and a student.
"Obviously, there is some concern raised with legislation like this," he said. "(The Palmer superintendent) asked me to file it, and I agreed to do it. We're talking now about a consensual relationship between of-age adults. It's a sticky wicket."
Fournier believes the proposed law would be a deterrent and would allow law enforcement officials to take steps regardless of the age of the students.
"Evidence in Connecticut shows that the frequency of inappropriate relations have decreased," Fournier said. "I don't see why Massachusetts can't have a similar law."
Palmer schools have a policy, adopted in 2006, barring "student-staff personal relationships which exceed the scope of normal professional student-staff relationships." Violating the policy can result in disciplinary action up to termination, according to the policy.
Fournier's request for the legislation came after a Palmer High School employee resigned in the fall during an investigation into his relationships with several female students. A report from the Police Department, obtained by The Republican through a public records request, indicated that two parents contacted police in October with concerns about their daughters' relationships with the man.
A report by officer Theodore N. Bonnayer II said that neither student would cooperate with police. He said he obtained one girl's cell phone in an effort to see if there were messages from the employee, but a forensic investigator determined that all messages had been erased. The investigator declined to seize the employee's computer, saying it had been "compromised" by a previous search by school officials.
Because the girls were 17, and because there was no allegation of force, any sexual interaction would not be a crime, said Bonnayer in the report. ..News Source.. by The Republican Newsroom
Sunday, April 5, 2009
From Predator to Person, Then Back to Jail Again
(Posted by eAdvocate) 4-5-2009 National:
Fear came so easily when I first heard about you, a child convicted of sexual assault, a child who would soon join my daughter’s homeroom class. I felt fear, based on the approximately seven sentences of information I knew about you from a closed meeting and a website. I wanted to warn my daughter that you might be a possible danger. I wanted to warn my friend that you had moved in with a family just three doors down from her house.
But I had a position that demanded, by its very name, confidentiality and balance and care. I was a member of the school board, with the title of Trustee. And if I couldn’t be trusted to stay calm and rational now, when the stakes were so high, how could I be trusted with anything?
I didn’t feel like I could even tell anyone anonymously. I did not want to expose you to hatred or possible danger based on fear and seven sentences.
So I kept my silence, and five days after that first meeting, my silence didn’t matter anymore. Parents began calling me as rumors spread and they learned of you through the sex offender website.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
Parents wanted more information, and I referred all questions to the administrator, exactly as I was supposed to do. People seemed mostly understanding about my reticence, with the exception of the friend who lived just a short walk away from your new home.
“I just want you to answer one question,” she said. “When did you know?”
“I found out five days ago,” I said. “I was told I couldn’t legally discuss it with anyone. I’m truly sorry.”
She hung up. I never have found out whether she was angry about the five-day silence, or perhaps suspected I had known for even longer. She has been friendly since then, but never again a friend.
Otherwise, people in our community shocked me with their calm, careful response to your arrival. I expected a large group of parents at the next board meeting, and crazy, enraged public comments; believe me, previous meetings had set the precedent. But parents instead scheduled quiet, private appointments with the administrators to ask what we were doing to keep their children safe. At least two parents threatened to withdraw their child because of you, but in the end, no one did.
* * *
I saw you on your first day of school. I came to the office to deliver my daughter’s forgotten lunch, and you were there with your backpack, waiting for your schedule. I recognized you from your photograph, a picture that now dissolved into a tall, awkward, long-legged boy wearing absurdly-large, black Converse tennis shoes. Normally, parents or relatives at our school wait with their children until they get their schedule straightened out. Normally, they embarrass them with hugs or goodbyes. You were on your own, and fidgety; you rocked on your feet and rubbed and squeezed the padded straps of your backpack.
The secretary handed you your schedule, then her phone rang, three calls at once. She put her hand over the receiver and whispered, “Would you mind walking Andrew to his class?”
So we walked down the hall together, and I talked too much. “You’re going to be in my daughter’s homeroom,” I told you, a stupid comment; how could I know what homeroom you were in without looking at your schedule? “This is it,” I said when we arrived at the door. “Have a good first day, Andrew.”
You flushed. Your skin is very pale, and your cheeks and neck turned red as you looked down at the floor and mumbled a single word: “Andy.”
I never did have to warn my daughter about you. You did that work for me in your second week of school. My daughter plopped into the car one afternoon and announced, “We’ve got this new kid? This Andy kid? He’s kind of perverted. I dropped a book, and I bent to pick it up, and he said, ‘You know, I could totally see all the way down your shirt right now. I could see everything if I wanted to.’”
So far, you were not doing a very good job accommodating my need to feel safe about you attending our school.
Your first days were not smooth: you spent at least a month on the margins. Other students spoke to you, and you had somewhere to sit at lunch. But I kept hearing worrisome details from parents, teachers, and my daughter. “Andy says he used to be in jail because he raped some kid,” she told me one day, but you had not said this directly to her. Supposedly you said it to Lyssa, who told it to Jennifer, who passed it to my daughter. Maybe you had said such a thing. Or maybe it was a third-hand rumor based on a comment a kid heard from a parent.
You definitely opened new topics of conversation in our school and community. A group of parents arranged for a counselor from a nearby Children’s Advocacy Center to talk about sexual abuse. The topic turned – carefully, theoretically – to you. “Children who engage in sexual activity at a young age have usually been abused themselves,” the counselor said. “A certain amount of experimenting between boys of similar ages is fairly common. There is a wide spectrum of ‘normal.’”
“What if the kid was convicted of sexual assault?” one mother said. “Surely that’s not normal.”
“Consider that the child may not have had a good lawyer,” the counselor replied. “The DA’s office in my city doesn’t usually pursue these cases as a criminal offense. They usually come to us to get help for the child and the victim and the family. Sexual abuse is often a problem passed from generation to generation. The entire family needs help for that cycle to be broken.”
* * *
Months passed. Our weather turned to its familiar, bipolar spring pattern: sweaters one day, shorts the next. I asked my daughter about you sometimes, inquiring whether you were still making rude comments. “I guess,” she said. “Not any more than some of the other guys, really. Especially Kevin. He’s such a jerk. So immature.” I knew and liked Kevin and his family. If Kevin’s outdoing you in rudeness, I thought, you are definitely making some progress.
You joined the track team. You were the tallest from our school; not the fastest, but you could clear hurdles like a gazelle. At our last home track meet of the year, I stood near the fence with another track mom, watching you run in the finals of the 300 meter hurdles. You started in last place, and then you began to surge ahead, running, leaping, just behind the top runners. My friend and I began jumping and yelling for our school and for you. “Andy! Go! You’ve got this!”
You came in second place. I remember this, and how you looked so focused as you ran. Not blank, like your website picture. Focused. You ran your hardest all the way through the finish line, ending strong, just like the coaches taught you to do. I watched your teammates give you high fives. I watched you sit on the field with the other boys, waiting until the scores were announced, saw your face turn a bit red when the coach walked over and handed you your silver medal.
I know about one more event that happened during your time with us. You attended a worship service for teenagers at one of our neighborhood churches. I am not a fan of this church. They are Bible literalists, they enthusiastically proselytize, and one of their deacons had once sent me an e-mail explaining my duty as a Christian to vote for George Bush over Al Gore. So I was not, of course, there for this service, and neither was my daughter.
But my daughter’s carpool friend told me about the service: how at the end, you had walked forward during the altar call. “Pastor James asked him if he wanted to say anything, and Andy shook his head,” the girl said. “He just stood there, and then he started crying all of a sudden, and James hugged him, and a bunch of us came forward and hugged him too, and everybody was crying.”
I have never known what to think of this story, and thought this young girl might perhaps be exaggerating. But if you were crying, were your tears from shame, or the pain of a desperately hard two years? Were you manipulating people somehow? Did you suddenly accept God into your life? Or were you crying because you had friends who suddenly seemed to have accepted you? What did I know about you? Snapshots and conversations. You came to us with a record. You were terribly nervous your first day. You never seemed to have stopped making provocative comments to your classmates. You were often in trouble with teachers because of your rude remarks, and because you never stayed still, never. You ran track. You won second place in a race. You once cried during a church altar call. Seven pieces of information. Not enough to know you. But enough to strip away a label. Enough to change you from predator to person.
And then, one day in May, my daughter came home and told me you would soon be going back to juvenile jail. “Andy has to wear this ankle thingy now,” she said. She did not know much more. I learned during one final, closed meeting that your relatives had taken you across the state line to visit a family member, violating your probation.
“How can that be fair?” I asked. “He didn’t go across state lines on his own; his relatives took him there. How can they send him back to jail for that?”
No answers; only speculation. I had fought against you coming to our school. I now surprised myself by being sorry to see you leave.
* * *
POSTSCRIPT I
In June, the administration called a special closed meeting of the board to tell us that a twelve-year-old had been sexually assaulted at our school during the last track meet of the year. The victim was cornered under the bleachers, pushed, slapped, and sodomized through his clothes with a practice relay baton while two boys stood and watched.
The story made the newspaper: “Twelve Year Old Brutally Attacked at Junior High Track Meet.” My phone began to ring. This time, parents conveyed all the rage and fear and hysteria I expected when you first arrived. Some parents demanded names: Who did this? Who watched? Some made a connection to you, and demanded to know, Was it that sex offender kid, what was his name, Andrew?
Legally, once again, I could say nothing. The case was in the hands of police investigators, who told us very firmly that anything we said could hurt an eventual case against Kevin. Kevin, the child who my daughter said was ruder than you, and “such a jerk… so immature.” I had not listened carefully enough to her comments because I knew Kevin, and his mother, a kind and quiet woman who had helped me organize the PTA bake sale that fall.
I could not reveal Kevin’s name. But I had no ethical hesitation at all in revealing who the abuser was not. “It wasn’t Andrew,” I said firmly. “He was running hurdles. I watched him race. He won second place. I watched him on the field when he got his medal. I watched him the whole time.”
The danger had been the boy we knew, the boy we weren’t watching.
* * *
POSTSCRIPT II
I thought of you this week because you contacted my daughter and her friend through MySpace. “His page is kind of weird,” she told me. “Lots of Emo stuff. He’s wearing all black clothes. He’s holding up his middle finger in one picture, and he has on black nail polish. He told us, ‘I hate my new school and I hate these F-in people.’ He said he wished he could come back to our school.”
Then she asked, “Do you even know who I’m talking about? The kid who went to jail? You remember Andy, right Mom?”
I came home and wrote down what I could recollect to see if I could come to any peace about you. I was not trying to suggest sex offender policy; I don’t know enough for that. In fact, the theme of my life these past three years seems to be learning how little I do know, or can know, about anything or anyone.
I wonder about you, and what will become of you when you turn eighteen, and your record is wiped clean, and you remake your life as a free adult. I wonder about the child you abused three years ago, and think how everyone seems to be a victim here.
I was halfway through this story before I even realized I was writing it as a letter. I have thought of you often, and hope your time with us brought some small hope and acceptance into your life, some meager point of grace that might help you focus, run toward something good, finish strong.
I do remember you. ..News Source.. by Salon
CA- MySpace Musings Aren't Private, Appeals Court Rules
4-5-2009 California: (Posted by eAdvocate)
Hate rained down on Cynthia Moreno's family after her hometown newspaper in Coalinga, Calif., published her online rant about how much she despised the small Central Valley city in which she had grown up. So much so that her family claims it had to move away.
Moreno sued for invasion of privacy, but late Thursday a Fresno, Calif.-based appellate court said she had no grounds even if she meant her thoughts for a limited audience on her MySpace page.
"The facts contained in the article were not private," 5th District Court of Appeal Justice Bert Levy wrote. "Rather, once posted on myspace.com, this article was available to anyone with Internet access."
Free-speech lawyer Karl Olson, who represents The Recorder but was not involved in this case, called the ruling a "cautionary tale" for Internet socializers. "Some people," he said, "probably may need a Miranda warning before they go on the Internet -- that anything they post can and will be used against them."
Moreno, a University of California at Berkeley student at the time, posted her "Ode to Coalinga" on her MySpace page fresh after visiting the town of 19,000 residents off Interstate 5 midway between Sacramento and Los Angeles. She began by saying "the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga," and then made several negative comments about the town and its inhabitants.
(Posted by eAdvocate)
The entry was posted only six days, but that was long enough for Roger Campbell, principal of Coalinga High School, to find the ode and forward it to Pamela Pond, editor of the Coalinga Record. The ode was published in the newspaper's letters section.
Local reaction was swift, according to the suit. Moreno's parents, David and Maria, and younger sister, Araceli, who lived in Coalinga, say they got death threats and a gun shot was fired at their home. David Moreno's 20-year-old business -- which wasn't identified in the ruling -- lost so much money that it was closed, the suit claimed, and the family moved out of town.
Moreno and her family responded by suing Campbell, the Coalinga Record, its publishers -- Lee Enterprises Inc., Lee Enterprises Newspapers Inc. and Hanford Sentinel Inc. -- and the Coalinga-Huron Unified School District. They alleged invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The publishers were dismissed from the suit, and eventually Fresno County Superior Court Judge Adolfo Corona sustained demurrers dismissing the complaints against the remaining defendants. The 5th District on Thursday affirmed the ruling on invasion of privacy.
"Cynthia's affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and, thus, opened it to the public eye," Justice Levy wrote. "Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material." He noted that Moreno's "potential audience was vast."
The court also said it wasn't relevant that Moreno only used her first name on her online journal, because her identity was "readily ascertainable" from her MySpace page.
"There is no allegation that Campbell obtained Cynthia's identification from a private source," Levy wrote. "In fact, Cynthia's MySpace page included her picture."
Presiding Justice James Ardaiz and Justice Gene Gomes concurred.
The justices gave the Moreno family a partial break by ruling that their emotional distress complaints should go before jurors. Moreno and her family contend that Campbell didn't have permission to submit the online journal to the Coalinga Record, had hoped to punish them for Moreno's comments, and that as the younger daughter's principal, his conduct was "extreme and outrageous."
"Based on these allegations," Levy wrote, "we conclude that reasonable people may differ on whether Campbell's actions were extreme and outrageous. Accordingly, it is for a jury to make this determination."
Neither Berkeley lawyer Paul Kleven, who represented the Moreno family, nor Paul Auchard, a partner with Fresno's Auchard & Stewart, who represented the school district and principal, returned calls seeking comment.
Olson called the case a "2009 Internet version" of Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co., 154 Cal.App.3d 1040, a 1984 ruling in which San Francisco's 1st District ruled that a gay man who was outed by a column by Herb Caen after he stopped an assassination attempt on then-President Gerald Ford couldn't sue for invasion of privacy.
"Certain people didn't know he was gay, but he had come out of the closet [to others]," Olson said. "So I think when you post something on the Internet -- even if you're not really thinking very carefully about what you post -- you don't really have a privacy claim."
The ruling is Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel Inc., 09 C.D.O.S. 4208. ..News Source.. by Mike McKee, The Recorder
