Plan to change registry altered

1-29-2010 South Dakota:

AG proposal means sex offenders must petition to move to lower tier

A state Senate committee Thursday accepted an amendment proposed by the attorney general on the much-debated sex offender registry bill.

The amendment now will become the base for Senate Bill 12, which would create a three-tiered system to classify sex offenders and give those convicted of lesser crimes an opportunity to get their names removed from the list.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to move forward with Attorney General Marty Jackley's amendment, which among other changes does not automatically assign offenders to a specific tier, but makes it the offender's responsibility to petition the court to be assigned to a lower tier.

"So the burden is really on the sex offender," Jackley said.

More amendments are expected, which is why committee chairman Sen. Gene Abdallah delayed the final committee vote on the bill for a week.
"I'm really, really happy how it went today. I think all parties are in agreement," Abdallah said.

"What I'm seeing in this proposed amendment is relatively pleasing, at least from our perspective," testified Cheri Scharffenberg, legislative coordinator for the South Dakota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Abdallah led a legislative study committee made up of House and Senate members who met several times before the session, producing eight bills that seek to change the state's sex offender laws. But it is the bill that contains the tiered setup that has gained the most attention.

Under the tier system, those convicted of rape or other severe crimes would be placed on Tier III of the registry for life. Those on Tier II would have to be on the list for at least 25 years before they could petition for removal. People convicted of less severe crimes, such as statutory rape, could end up on Tier I for at least 10 years.

Jackley's amendment puts misdemeanor indecent exposure, which the study committee had proposed removing from the registry, back on it.
Abdallah didn't state whether that's a provision he wants deleted.

"That's something we will be discussing," he said.

The amendment also moved offenders who intentionally expose someone to HIV from Tier II to Tier III.

There still are details that need to be ironed out, such as whether the bill would be retroactive.

It's been more than a decade since half of the offenders on the registry were convicted of their crimes, according to an Argus Leader analysis of December sex offender registry data.
About 130 of those offenders were convicted more than 25 years ago, and for a handful, it's been half a century.

But the registry was created in 1994, so the committee must decide whether the minimum number of years on the list in Tiers I and II start when offenders were convicted, when they were released from jail or when the registry was started.

The Judiciary Committee also unanimously passed four bills regarding sex offender registry laws, including allowing offenders to live in homeless shelters and halfway houses that are within 500 feet of schools or parks. The other three reduce the grace period for certain sex offenders to register from five to three days; apply out-of-state registry laws to those offenders not convicted in South Dakota; and add convictions of conspiracy or solicitation of sex crimes as registerable offenses.

Legislators and Jackley have been working for several weeks to come to an agreement.

Two weeks ago, Jackley's objections to the summer study committee's tier proposal caught members off-guard.

Jackley was pleased with Thursday's developments "I remain positive that between the summer study and the leadership shown in the Senate Judiciary Committee that everyone is working hard to improve the sex offender registry," he said.

The four remaining bills regarding sex offender registry laws will be addressed by the Senate Judiciary Committee next Thursday. ..Source.. Megan Luther