MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Vermont lawmakers are grappling with how close to perfect the state's sex offender registry needs to be before offenders' addresses are posted online.
Vermont in 2009 passed a law saying the registry had to have a clean audit from the state auditor of accounts before addresses could be posted. A 2010 audit found many errors; a follow-up audit last July found what Auditor of Accounts Doug Hoffer labeled "critical errors" in 11 percent of cases.
The July report found eight cases in which offenders had been released from incarceration, but had not had their names added to the online registry. In two cases, the offender did not meet the criteria for registration, but had information posted anyway. In one case, the registered offender was dead. Thirty-four cases mislabeled the length of time a person was supposed to remain on the registry, which is 10 years for some crimes and lifetime registration for others, Hoffer's office reported.
Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday the standard should be a 0 percent error rate on information as basic as whether someone should or should not be on the online registry.
At a Judiciary Committee meeting Jan. 8, Sears appeared more flexible.
Committee members and witnesses, including Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn, said it was unfortunate that the 2009 law did not define what a clean audit meant in terms of an acceptable error rate.
"You can't keep waiting for a positive audit, without defining what a positive audit is. If we were to define (the error rate), it would probably be 10 percent," Sears said, according to a recording of the session.
Defender General Matthew Valerio interjected, "Or 5, or 2."
Sears added, "Or 5 or 2 or 1 (percent)."
Sears said the most important thing to get right was whether someone should be on the registry at all. "If you're supposed to be on it, you should be on it. If you're not supposed to be on it, you shouldn't be," he said.
With Hoffer's finding that in two cases, even that information was wrong, Sears acknowledged that perfection would be difficult to attain. "Human beings enter the information" into a Department of Public Safety database, he said.
The issue makes civil libertarians nervous.
"You should have the registry accurate before you start adding addresses because when you add addresses you've created a target for vigilantes," said Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Two Maine sex offenders were fatally shot in 2006 after information about them was posted online. Authorities said the gunman, Stephen A. Marshall, 20, of Nova Scotia, fatally shot himself when police confronted him on a bus in Boston.
Valerio told The Associated Press he doesn't like the idea of adding addresses at all. People with criminal convictions in their background tend to move frequently. A new person moving into an apartment or home vacated by someone on the registry could be targeted, he said.
But Sears said he did not want to reopen what he considers a settled issue, adding that he supports posting of sex offenders' addresses. ..Source.. by Dave Gram
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