Lawyer for homeless Grand Rapids sex offenders seeks injunction to allow men to stay at shelters near schools

6-10-2010 Michigan:

GRAND RAPIDS -- The attorney for five homeless sex offenders has filed for a preliminary injunction to bar prosecution if they sleep in the city's homeless shelters, which all are within Student Safety Zones -- or within 1,000 feet of a school.

"If a Student Safety Zone law is interpreted to prohibit homeless registrants from accessing emergency shelters, then registrants are faced with a 'do or die' choice," attorney Miriam Aukerman wrote in her request filed this week in U.S. District Court.

"They can commit a crime by staying in a shelter, or risk injury or death by sleeping in the street," she wrote.

The five sex offenders, identified only by pseudonyms, along with Degage Ministries and Mel Trotter Ministries, filed suit earlier this year against Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Attorney General Mike Cox, retired state police Director Peter Munoz and Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth over a state law that kept sex offenders out of emergency shelters near schools.

Aukerman said the Safety Zone law was intended to keep sex offenders from buying or renting homes near schools, not to prevent homeless from have a safe night's sleep. The issue came to the forefront last year when Thomas Pauli froze to death in a salvage yard after he reportedly was refused shelter because of a 1991 conviction for molesting a pre-teen girl.

Aukerman said her clients did not commit serious sex offenses. Three of them were convicted of high-court misdemeanors, she said.

She maintained that prohibiting sex offenders from staying at overnight shelters amounted to cruel or unusual punishment. She said sex offenders are not prohibited from obtaining services from the homeless agencies in the day, just from staying overnight.

"... (T)here is little sense in barring the homeless from seeking shelter at night, when schools are closed, when those same individuals can obtain other services at the same location during the day. ... Here, plaintiffs clearly face irreparable harm: they must choose between the inability to obtain shelter with the attendant risks of injury or death, or alternately, prosecution and incarceration."

Assistant Attorney General Margaret Nelson, representing the state, urged no action be taken on the lawsuit. In an earlier filing, she said a case before the state Supreme Court "could have a substantial and significant impact on this case, particularly the determination of whether a homeless shelter is a 'residence' within the meaning of the challenged state statute."

A state appellate court panel ruled earlier this year it was not possible for homeless sex offenders to report their residences because they do not have one. ..Source.. John Agar