Chuck Kenville’s new blog, Iowa Champion, has a story demonstrating the inherent problems with legislation designed to make registered sex offenders a permanent underclass. According to this MSNBC story,
Jennifer Lower was convicted of a misdemeanor sex offense in Ohio seven years ago. After moving to Iowa, and then moving her family to a town with no schools or day cares — which she can’t live near under Iowa law — she’s learned that she is still in violation of the law.
From the Cass County Jail, Lower, 29, said she’s frustrated. Lower is a married mother of three. She already moved her family to try to comply with Iowa’s sex-offender residency law that bans sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care. She said she can’t find a home that complies.
It’s not that each individual restriction doesn’t comport with some common sense notion that it’s a reasonable limitation and suited to protect children, but that the totality makes it impossible for a sex offender to find any location that complies with the law
Forced out of Atlantic, Lower and her family moved 5 miles west to Marne, Iowa. There are no schools or day cares in Marne, so Lower said she thought she and her family were safe.
Then Marne passed a new ordinance, making it illegal for sex offenders to live within 2,000 feet of a park or school bus stop. Lowers’ home was a couple blocks from the park and less than a block from a bus stop, so once again, a court ordered Lower to move.
In many areas, it would seem impossible to find a home that is not within 2,000 feet of a school bus stop. For those who really don’t care about sex offenders, we’re still stuck with a problem. They have to be somewhere. We just can’t create a system that makes it impossible for them to find a home that complies with the law.
In this specific instance, Lower refused to move again and was sentenced to 30 days in jail as a result. The point of the sentence appears ludicrous. After serving her sentence, she’s still left with no viable options to find a lawful place to reside. It makes as much sense as the judge ordering her to sprout wings and fly.
While sex offenders remain the least sympathetic of any discrete group in the criminal justice system, this situation is clearly out of control. There are far too many offense inappropriately and unnecessarily wrapped up in the sex offender classification, and legislators are busy creating increasing limitations that present an impossible situation.
It may soon come to the point where we will need an island somewhere to be populated solely with registered sex offenders, that being the only real estate in America that complies with these restrictions. Unfortunately, I imagine that a majority of Americans wouldn’t really have much of a problem with this idea.
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I’ve been saying for the longest time that they’re all going to migrate to Montana, with its vast open spaces.
Either that or we’re going to have to send ’em all to LA and ship it off into the ocean, like that Kurt Russell movie.
I keep wondering whether anybody will care, until it’s them or someone they know. Like everything in criminal law, the attitude is “screw ’em” until it affects you.
Exactly right. And then it will be too late.
Imagine if every town and city in the country pass similar legislation. With development as widespread as it is now, there literally will not be anywhere for sex offenders to go.
It is quite possible we will see them living under bridges, by the side of highways, in forests, hiding. Even that won’t be enough.
As stories like this demonstrate, all sex offenders aren’t the scary predators we have been led to believe they are. There are families affected by this.
But…legislation and good sense rarely go hand in hand.
STUNG’S FIRST POSTULATE: The purpose of all sex offender legislation is to put all registered sex offenders, no matter how long ago the sentence, or how serious the crime, into prison for the rest of their lives.
That, in a nutshell, is why we have all the laws around the country. Because people cannot think rationally when it comes to laws involving children, then by definition, there is NO place in society for registered sex offenders to live. Note that virtually every major child offender law is named after a MURDERED child to evoke the emotional aspect (read: NON-rational aspect).
Stung’s First Postulate? That’s a new one.
Michael, I see that your focus is specifically on sex offenders, and they have certainly born the brunt of these byzantine restrictions that are designed to make their lives impossible. Politics has long figured out that they get enormous play out of the public’s fear of crime. It used to be drugs. Now it’s sex offenders, who turn out to be a terrific foil for tough-on-crime politicians because they have no defenders. No one in power will ever stand up for sex offenders, making them a perfect target for fear and public anger. They are society’s premier whipping boy du jour.
But while you may be focused specifically on sex offenders, the problem is pervasive and applies to all areas of crime. The manipulative use of names is a plague of marketing for all criminal laws, from the USA Patriot Act to Jessica’s Law, Meagan’s Law, etc.
Hi, I’m one of the people you wish to murder because my name is on this sex offender list.
Over a year after I left my girlfriend her 13 y/o sister said we had consensual sex. I was arrested but couldn’t afford an attorney so they gave me a public defender.
The public defender looked at her picture and told me, “she was a pretty girl, big breasts, the jury will believe her so you should take a plea.”
I said, “But I’m innocent, how can they put me away by just saying this happened?”
He then said, “It’s election time they don’t need proof, if the jury don’t get you the judge will.”
I plead no contest, and they labeled me a predator, at the time – I had no clue what that meant. After watching my family go through the ridiculing, embarrassment, and shame all these years, after fighting in court for my child for five years to find us homeless because of a new daycare center, jobless, after being beat down when I was locked up, they wouldn’t even let me out unless I said I was guilty of this crime, they told me if I declared my innocents I would be charged with “discrediting the victim”, after paying $10,000 in fines, after the vandalizing, the embarrassment, shame, humiliation, after having all my rights, freedom, respect, and dignity being stripped away, I know now what that meant.
I’ve learned the hard way what they done to me. They cursed me. It’s the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep. When it slips my mind they make sure to remind me through the television, radio, newspaper, internet, and when that fails society picks up where they left off, through the looks from the neighbors, through my children harassment from the neighborhood kids and at school and library. They remind through my jobs, relationships, and friends. They remind me with the fliers and even with spray paint.
I know you don’t believe my innocents no one ever does. That doesn’t matter, the fact is, this can happen to you, it only took a little lie to make my family and I’s life hell. Then the indignant anger and hate makes you crazy for awhile, It did me. I briefly thought about revenge on that girl, but the point is she was a child who simply told a lie, that is normal, and the curse will still be there, every day of my entire life. It is no longer her.
I tried to take this back to court, I gave a lawyer $1,500 cash and never heard anything back accept once, he said, “they won’t allow it back in court”, why? Lord only knows. He kept my money too.
I think this curse will only grow worse through time, so prepare yourself because it only takes a few words to destroy the life of you and your family. Where were you a year and a half ago from today can you prove it?
NOTE: 90% of sex offenders are family members, 97% are male, 1.5% of convicted sex offenders re offend. So the odds are YOU are more of a threat to commit a sex offense than a “sex offender”. So what are the next set of laws going to be? The Walsh law-same.
What would possibly make you write something like this?
When you read a lot of posts there are people who say the only good sex offender is a dead one. Also, these laws are passed to make the sex offender fail and go back to prison.
This guy is getting to his wits end it seems. I have always thought that if society keeps changing the rules on sex offenders it would only be a matter of time before they strike back and really do something that causes pain for a family and even the nation.
The hysteria that is created by law makers quoting false and misleading facts to pass their laws is deplorable and counter productive. Common sense does not rule the day.
This is a criminal defense law blog. We’re not the people who post about murdering sex offenders, and we’re most assuredly not the people who need to be lectured about the hardship these laws create. That was the point of the post. Was that somehow unclear?
The angst should be directed toward those who deserve it, and the explanations to those who need them. This is not an appropriate place for such venting, or an explanation of the painfully obvious.
I understand and agree. Thanks.
Cute hateful comments by some of the above people, but thank God these people are not the majority of citizens who can see the humane unfairness of these laws.
The ignorance of those who believe a sex offender could never be in their own family is astounding. There are families of 30,000 Ohio citizens alone who never thought their loved one would be accused of a sex crime, Yet now they face reality. Yes, your loved one could be sexually violated. Yes, your loved one could be a sexual offender. Think twice before you take Constitutional rights from other citizens. It might affect YOUR family too.
It’s mindless and easy for anyone to say throw the life of an accused sex offender away. I believe that only after you have experienced the ridiculous lack of evidence it takes to be convicted of a sex offense in this country, then and ONLY then are you qualified to render your opinion on what should be done next. While we all support that sex offenders need jail time, I also want all of you babbling about throwing a life away that if you knew first hand how easy it is for a child to lie, and for a conviction to be obtained in toady’s courtrooms every man, and mother of a son should be petrified that you will be next. My step daughter had my husband thrown in jail because she lied about where she got herpes. She she my husband raped her, and even though we could prove he did not have the disease, the courts put him in jail. she couldn’t even describe the sex act correctly. She said a man 7 inches talled then herself pentrated her when they stood flatfooted facing each other. Impossible! but my husband is in jail, and the boy who gave her herpes is no where to be found. You tell me how this is justice?