No doubt ex post facto. Clearly a hate bill. No logical purpose for this proposal.1-19-2015 Virginia:
Sex offenders from decades ago, who committed their crimes before the state’s registry was created in 1994, would have their names added to a registry supplement under legislation that advanced Monday.
Senate Bill 1074 would require state police to comb through local court records, primarily for sex offenses committed against children. They would add names to a separate, but publicly searchable, list covering offenses between 1980 and 1994.
State senators, who passed this bill through committee Monday, heard from a man who said he was molested as a child, but didn’t report it until he grew up and had children of his own. He said he discovered his attacker, a T-ball coach, had sodomized another child years before his own encounter.
He tracked the man down and discovered him living next to Demaree McKinney and his family. McKinney said the man didn’t harm his children, but he was appalled. His wife had specifically searched the state’s registry, he said. “We thought we were safe,” McKinney said.
The bill cleared the Senate Courts of Justice Committee easily, but it heads to the Senate Finance Committee so its fiscal impact can be assessed.
Mary Devoy, an activist pushing for sex offense registry reforms, spoke against the bill. She said the wider database would subject more people to the confusion of mistaken identities. She also said that similar efforts to widen these lists in other states have run into legal challenges because the law was changed ex post facto – that is, after the offense. ..Source.. by Travis Fain
No comments:
Post a Comment